Is Bioinformatics for you?

?? This article is an excerpt from my talk with Heels and Tech.

Bioinformatics is an interesting mesh of biology, computation, and statistics. I like to call it the tech of biology, and rightly so, it is living up to the hype. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, bioinformatics has been topping the market size and projections charts. It is a discipline with a lot of interest and investment from the government as well as academic and industry stakeholders. Given the high level of cash injections from multiple parties, you can expect rewarding remuneration packages if you are a skilled professional (see salary expectations).

However, not everyone is cut out for interdisciplinary science. Just by judging from the building blocks of bioinformatics (biology + coding + stats), if you want to completely shy away from at least 2 of them for the rest of your life, I can already suggest that you, most likely, are not cut out for the technical demands of bioinformatics (Don’t quit the article yet ??). There are also non-technical roles in bioinformatics.

Technically,

Jobs with upstream development descriptions demand more of your coding and biology skills since you are making first contact with the raw data. It is your job to ensure that you prepare the data for downstream analysis and applications by developing custom pipelines (coding dependent). Understanding the research context (biology) is required here so you don’t ‘over-clean” the data. For example, if you are provided with a small RNA enrichment dataset (biology), you have to recalibrate the trimming section of your pipeline (coding), else you will trim the real dataset itself. A little bit of stats is kinda of required since you will have to read/report the QC graphs, counts, and p-values (if applicable).

While:

On the flip side, jobs with downstream development descriptions demand all three building blocks of bioinformatics. Here, you are going in circles between the research question (biology), solving the data (coding), and data interpretation (biology+stats). Your stats and coding proficiency will be demanded at every step of the way as you may (if not will) have to write custom solutions that are extremely specific to your data type.

N/B: Kindly read the tech stack in bioinformatics article: Coming Soon

Let’s take a look at your personality;

Personally, I love this part. Partly because I think more than anything else, your kind of person determines your sweet spot in life, your chances of success, and whether you will reach the highest heights of that spot.

In the context of bioinformatics, it is not so easy to say you are right for bioinformatics just based on your personality. However, you may not fit into the industry but fit perfectly well into the academic landscape because of your personality. I have noted some of the top personality traits that I have seen over time.

Visit https://thehackbio.com/path-finder ↗?to conduct a fitness test in bioinformatics for yourself.

In summary,

Technical bioinformatics can be learned by anyone anywhere but your personality and interests can redefine your career choices, job description, and where you will make the most impact and relevance.

Please be on the lookout for the next article on Career Salary breakdown in bioinformatics.

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Written by: Adewale Ogunleye