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Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

222 points by nscalf 7y ago

In the past few years the news around biology has been getting more exciting and frequent, between CRISPR and biotech firms working on niche drugs. I'm really interested in learning more about the skills needed to start a biotech company, but I'm lacking the masters degree in biology. What skills are actually needed to get into the field and does anyone know any good resources to learn them?

wonderwonder 7y ago
Not mine but a useful link. Bioinformatics may not be exactly what you are looking for but its a nice bridge between software and biology. https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics
dysoncdn 7y ago
Learn biochemistry not biology
- Ultimatt 7y ago
  Dunno the context of evolution goes a very long way even on the biochem.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
If you're interested in genetic engineering/CRISPR, check out the following book: Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. He does a fantastic job of layman's writing on science, his other book on Cancer is fascinating and extremely well written, that one is called "Emperor of Maladies". I'd highly recommend both, but don't expect ANY other writing on bio to be that engaging :) https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/1432837818 https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...
iskander 7y ago
I transitioned into cancer immunotherapy research after Computer Science grad school. Biology is a mess and it will take several years to get up to speed on any one research area. The best options are either grad school or finding a job which doesn't initially require a lot of bio background but provides the opportunity to learn. It's also worth checking out local biohacker spaces, they can teach some basic techniques but you'll hit a ceiling quickly. To really "start a biotech company" you'll really need to spend a long time outside your comfort zone.
el_cujo 7y ago
Your best bet is probably to look for a co-founder with an MS or PHD in molecular biology rather than trying to get yourself to that level from the ground up. If you have some biology background and just want to understand the specifics of Crispr, you can start with this paper[0] and just google every term you aren't familiar with until you make it all the way through. If you don't know biology at all, this[1] is a common text book in undergrad programs for molecular/cellular biology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23287718 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23287718 [1] https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059 https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/...
rubidium 7y ago
Go find a biotech company hiring software engineers where the biochemists are in the same room/ building. Get a job there. Get to know biochemists and ask them about their work and work problems, listen to their talks, read a lot. Get mentored by a PhD in the field at the company. When a new biotech product team is getting formed get yourself on the project. Whatever you do, don’t compete with biologists.... there’s just too many of them and the lab skills are valuable but in abundant supply.
shpongled 7y ago
I'm in my 5th year of a chemical biology PhD and I'm looking to potentially move into computer science/data science (been programming for 15 years) after I graduate. Maybe we can just switch? I work with CRISPR for my project. In all seriousness, you are going to need a PhD if you want to truly understand all of the background of the field. Human biology/biochemistry is just about the most complex thing humans have ever studied. It would surely be easier to just find people with the requisite skill sets. Even if you just want to start a company, I feel that it would be really hard to pick out a scientific direction/what your company is going to do, without a rigorous scientific background
- Ultimatt 7y ago
  +1 for this is a PhD level thing. The science and technology is not at the sort of commodity level where you do a masters and you're done really. A good approach is to just get in the face of a lot of lab people working on new tech/IP who could really use software support for what they are doing in an area of trial and error that could otherwise scale. But if you are thinking biotech with lab, you need huge seed investment to begin with for the lab, unless you are spinning out of academia.
- tomp 7y ago
  Can you explain your reasoning behind need a PhD? It makes sense to me why you should learn a lot to understand a complex field, but I fail to see why you should also spend a few years researching a very narrow subfield... wouldn't it be better to be a generalist and be able to apply your knowledge widely, as opposed to only understanding a tiny sliver of the whole field?
  - el_cujo 7y ago
    Yeah I'm not sure I agree you need a full-blown PhD just to understand this stuff. Some-hands on work, definitely. I would say that you need a PhD to be taken seriously as a leader on the science-side of a biotech company though.
    - notus 7y ago
bbgm 7y ago
There are two areas where you can jump in more easily with a CS/software background. Many companies are building informatics/analysis pipelines. That’s likely closer to what you know and you can pick up enough biology along the way. Alternatively there’s a lot of algorithm/classifier development you could jump into. It’s usually easier going the other way though. Biology is a complex beast.
- bbgm 7y ago
  To be more specific, the first company I worked at had three co-founders; an algorithms person, a functional biology expert, and someone with experience in building software teams. The first two came from academia.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
pvaldes 7y ago
> I'm interested in learning more about the skills needed to start a biotech company, but I'm lacking the masters degree in biology. What skills are actually needed to get into the field You will need two basic skills 1) The skill to understand that trying to manipulate by yourself a delicate and exquisitely calibrated machine without knowing what you do, is a bad idea. There is a fair possibility that you end with either bad products like a method for pursuing suspects based in DNA of a chunk of cut hair (made entirely of cheratin that does not have any DNA). Incorrect biological explanations or a very expensive machine broken are also probable results 2) The skill to hire a trained biologist that will do the job
fabian2k 7y ago
For most of the things you actually do in practice as a scientist in that field you generally need to be trained by someone that knows the particular area of biology and the specific methods you're using. It's not just about the general background knowledge, which is certainly important, but on top of that you need specific experience for each specialized area you work in. Biology is a vast field, and there is simply an enormous amount to learn. And you also need to understand the methods and techniques used to perform experiments, which can get pretty deep into physics at times, and requires a lot of very specialized knowledge for many of the more complex methods. Statistics is also important for many types of experiments. It's really not easy and fast to gain the necessary knowledge, people in the field generally have a bachelor/master and a PhD, and that is the start of your scientific career.
baron_harkonnen 7y ago
Right now I know a ridiculous amount of people with bio phds from top tier schools that are trying to make it as data scientists. I don't think there is a bio revolution like the software revolution that is happening quite yet. I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do. All of the interesting jobs around that space are still largely tech jobs.
- cryoshon 7y ago
  >I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do. yep, that's why i left the industry. the companies know that the science staff are willing to work for less, so long as they have the opportunity to do what they're interested in. so they end up working for much less.
- firstplacelast 7y ago
  Same thing I've witnessed. I was in the industry for almost a decade and worked on the computational side for half that time, then left for a DS role in an unrelated industry. Everyone I knew that had halfway decent programming/math skills ended up leaving eventually. The pay differential for what your skills can bring you in other industries is massive. There's so many interesting things going on in biotech, but they're always on the horizon and are likely decades from any commercial product (synthetic bio, DNA as data storage, etc). On top of that, no one gets super rich from equity at a start-up unless you are an exec. If you're lucky and pick the right pony when it's under 30 employees and spend a decade there until a massive IPO, you'll at most get a couple 100k's. Employees in biotech are not valuable enough to get big paydays. Also, you're likely working on products, that if successful, will help people live longer. So when you're already not paid enough to buy the cheapest home in your city, you're at best ensuring those old folks who already have homes will live longer and make your home ownership dream less likely.
tito 7y ago
Check out Benchling! YC company (S12), founded by a CS undergrad from MIT. [1] Learn more about their story. Biotech is growing so fast. There’s tons of room for scientists and non-scientists alike. Programmers have a lot to add here, even with zero bio background, the power of a fresh mind. Talk with scientists and learn what problems they have. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sajith-wickramasekara https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sajith-wickramasekara
iongoatb 7y ago
I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determines how skilled you become. If you have strong CS skills then you should: 1) Focus on bioinformatics. You will immediately be of use as far as making your own product/service or working for a startup if you apply your skills there. Most bio specialists are incredibly weak at data analysis and/or any type of computing. Pretty much all the important problems in bio are computational in nature. The "impressive" bio researchers/scientists have the data science skills of a sub-par / average data scientist / CS grad. 2) Create a home lab or find one / start one locally. Look up the odin project. Work on DIY genetic engineering and you can even take classes from that site. If you just get to this point and stop you will literally have more practical skill and knowledge than the vast majority of graduates with bio degrees. 3) Lots of biohackers experiment with themselves for clout/hype/attention. It never ends well. There are plenty of lab organisms that you can easily source and ethically experiment with. 4) Don't listen to anyone that tells you that you can't do something because you don't have a PhD. Those are the same type of people that missed out on the computing and internet revolutions because they were busy doing trivial academic work.
- Odenwaelder 7y ago
  1) Not enough for starting a biotech startup as OP would like to do. Having a PhD means that you've spent years on a certain subject. You cannot just read a book and be up to speed on biomedical research and CRISPR. 2) Having hands-on experience in wet labs is useful and relatively easy to learn. People can learn wet lab skills sufficient to carry out experiments (i.e. pipetting stuff together) in under a year. This is not what research is about though. 3) True 4) You don't need a PhD. But to truly succeed in biology, you need to learn things from the ground up, which takes years of studying. If you just read a few books, you will be able to understand certain parts of it, but as a founder of a biotech startup, you will be the equivalent of a tech startup founder blindly following buzzwords such as "blockchain".
bioinformatics 7y ago
I would start with genetics and genomics, then add some protein knowledge and focus on the techniques that rely mostly on informatics/bioinformatics, like Next-Generation Sequencing, chromatography and similar. Add some evolution and phylogenetic, which with a mathematical background should be straightforward to grasp.
cryoshon 7y ago
my background is in biotech and i've worked at a small handful of biotech startups in a scientific capacity. here's my advice: unless you have friends who can set you up with the right VCs and ensure that they will be willing to overlook your lack of experience and IP, don't bother. you're not going to get up to speed working in the lab on your own in any short amount of time. learning the theoretical stuff that you need to know won't take long, but you probably won't understand how to use the theory to make something novel until you've spent time in the lab. and you won't know how to vet the ideas of people with phds, either. then there's the elephant in the room: risk. biotech is extremely risky because drug development is difficult even under ideal conditions. making "niche drugs" is even more difficult than making drugs for the mainstream because niche diseases won't have as much of the scientific background already researched when you sit down to try to come up with a useful therapy concept. if you want to talk in more depth about the skills which are actually needed to get into the field in a scientific or a business capacity, i've advised someone who reached out to me here on HN about that exact topic in the past, and i'm more than happy to discuss it with you via email. check out my profile if you're interested.
- cft 7y ago
  But here's the question: maybe you can become a provider of highly optimized big data processing or data visualization software, without deep knowledge in biology?
  - cryoshon 7y ago
    you probably can, but it's hard to know what will be in demand without doing a lot of customer interviews with the people who would need your service.
    - cft 7y ago
      Where is the best place to meet the right people? I talked to my friend (PhD) and she explained the process of conversion from Illumina file formats all the way to numpy , but I would love to know more.
teekert 7y ago
I'm a self-taught bio-informatician (working at large healthcare company, doing Next Generation Sequencing related things). although I am actively seeking to better myself, My code is horrible, we have one "library" (a file really) full of functions and since 2 months a couple of classes that I already feel like completely re-writing. A lot of code is in Jupyter Notebooks somewhere because we just got the hang of Git last year, let alone proper branching. Pull requests? Yes I've heard of them. Transferring code to partners is always troublesome. Man I wish we would have had a proper code-writer on board from the very start, bonus points if that someone excited about biology! So bring it on I say! Just apply to any mayor classical bio-company. I mean biologists need to become data-scientists and computer scientists more and more, and they can use a lot of help. For example: During my internship in 2003 I did DNA sequencing, I spend all day making a gel and loading it and I read 200 basepairs of DNA of a printed paper to check my results. Today we have an Illumina sequencer in the lab, it produces 60 billion basepairs every couple of days. We are nowhere anymore without computers and computer scientists.
- unearthed 7y ago
  I love git. Literally the only way to be productive when you've got more than 4 people touching code. Do you guys allow remote work?
  - teekert 7y ago
    I work from home sometimes, and 1 of our team members is in the US (but still at the same company). We have no people completely isolated that never come into the office.
    - unearthed 7y ago
      I know for programmers / coders its a weird question but what about part time?
      - teekert 7y ago
        Why is this a weird question? I work 90% (36 hours) many of my colleagues work 32. In the Netherlands (in my bubble) it seems almost standard for both parents to go to 32 (4x8) and both have one non-weekend day with the kid(s).
aaavl2821 7y ago
I'm not a scientist but have worked in biotech in VC, started a venture backed therapeutics company, and worked with the life sci group of a FAANG. Having a PhD is not essential -- I know many successful VCs, founders and operators without PhDs -- but you absolutely need an appreciation of science. People like to hire PhDs because they have a fundamental knowledge of biology and or chemistry and they have deep experimental experience in a specific domain. Without that experience doing experiments it's hard to really understand the challenges of science and rigor required. That said not all PhDs give you that, and academic science tends to be less rigorous than industry science Also, developing a drug requires PhD level experience in many domains and no one person can do it all. A neuroscience PhD won't necessarily qualify you to review tox data. You need people who can quickly get up to speed on various technical fields, find experts and have productive conversations with them You need to understand the drug development process at a basic level. There are lots of articles about this online, here's one I wrote [0] You need to understand how to evaluate and critique scientific and clinical data. It is easier to start by looking at clinical data. You can learn to analyze this data without a PhD if you spend time with it and ideally have a mentor. Here is a case study I wrote on basic concepts in evaluating clinical data [1] Evaluating preclinical or scientific data is much harder. In nonhuman studies you are measuring more endpoints with less direct relationship to human disease in more contrived systems. The experiments also tend to be less rigorously designed, executed and documented (at least in academia) so there are all kinds of pitfalls to avoid that you can't really know without experience. This is where a PhD really helps To start learning this just struggle through papers. Find a paper that interests you and read it in depth. Learn what each experiment and instrument does. Learn what each molecule does. Here's an example I wrote translating a synthetic biology paper into layman studies terms to give you a sense of what goes into reading a paper [2] If you have a scientist friend who can walk you through papers that speeds up the process by orders of magnitude and you can learn so much At first read for comprehension. Then read with a critical eye. Why did they do this experiment instead of this other one? Are they missing an important control here? Is this model robust? Are the conclusions they draw stronger that what the data suggest? Learn how drugs are valued. Valuation is different in biotech than any other sector. Drugs don't have revenue or users for years. A drug can. A worth $10B before FDA approval. Value in biopharma comes from reducing technical risk. I wrote a post about that here [3]. Most biotech founders lack either the science or business knowledge needed. It is easier to learn the business stuff so that can let you add value to a company while learning more about the science [0] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/drug_dev_process.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/drug_dev_process.html [1] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/aducanumab-analysis https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/aducanumab-analysis [2] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/synbio-laymans-terms.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/synbio-laymans-terms.html [3] https://www.baybridgebio.com/drug_valuation.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/drug_valuation.html
hprotagonist 7y ago
Mostly, my advice as a biomedical researcher and modeler/software user is this, which is not skills based at all and is instead just a reminder that you're going to need a really fundamental shift in thinking. Get the notion that "biology is a computer that we can fundamentally and totally understand at the level that we understand Church-Turing" out of your head as soon as possible because it is incorrect. Biological systems are complex, they are deeply nonlinear, we do not even come close to understanding the functional behavior of their components (or, indeed, what those components even ARE) the way we can understand transistors or chips or API specs, etc. The sooner you get used to believing that "I can't prove anything, but we have a pile of mostly not contradictory evidence that suggests that most of the time this idea is a pretty good heuristic and our error bars are reasonable", the better you'll do and the saner you'll remain. Some recommended worldview reading for you: The Andy Grove Fallacy: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/andy_grove_rich_famous_smart_and_wrong http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/and... Can A Biologist Fix A Radio: https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.pdf https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p... Can A Neuroscientist Understand A Microprocessor https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... And if you like, I can provide a basically endless stream of papers of the form "we thought X did Y and we knew what X was; it turns out that X actually does Q, it also turns out we don't know why X does anything at all, but when we do X we sometimes get Y so we've been confused for the past 50 years"
- tikej 7y ago
  So much this. I think the most difficult thing about transition from hard sciences such as cs/physics/math to wet science such as biology/sociology/psychology is to get used to the fact that sometimes things don't work and behave as expected and it takes enormous amount of work to get it right. Therefore you can't really go and design things form the first principles, since first principles are not really that well known. Of course you can try, and get some successes but that is rare. Add extremely complicated AND nonlinear dependences between the systems you are working with and you may get idea why we still don't have cure for most cancers yet.
derekja 7y ago
Where are you located? A lot of places now have community biology labs in makerspaces that are doing really fun things. Start here: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Hackerspaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Hackerspaces Not all of the places on that list will have biology labs, but some will! It's a good way to get some experience at the bench without going the degree route.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  The hackerspaces.org link is good, but to add to that, here is a list that is specifically "biohacker" groups/spaces. https://diybio.org/local/ https://diybio.org/local/ For anybody in/near the Research Triangle Park area of NC, there is Tri-DIY-Bio, a pretty active DIY bio group. http://www.tridiybio.org/ http://www.tridiybio.org/
sxv 7y ago
"Getting started in biology" and "starting a biotech company" to me are opposite ends of a continuum, akin to "learning how to walk" vs "training for a marathon". I made the transition from web dev to bioinformatics five years ago and while I have a good job in academia, I wouldn't dream of starting a bioX company without a bioX cofounder.
jchallis 7y ago
Join Lucence. Our dry lab and wet lab work are world class and you will learn in the context of real problems for real patients with real samples. We are hiring in SF and Singapore for informatics roles.
- delinquentme 7y ago
  contact info?
  - jchallis 7y ago
    Email your CV and a paragraph on your interest to: hr at lucencedx.com Bonus points for citing our active jobs page: https://www.lucencedx.com/careers/ https://www.lucencedx.com/careers/
    - delinquentme 7y ago
      Generic HR inbox? I don't think you're actually concerned about this.
boltzmannbrain 7y ago
Biotech startup school: https://www.baybridgebio.com/biotech-startup-school.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/biotech-startup-school.html
esel2k 7y ago
I lead projects with software and bioinformaticians in one of the worlds top bioinfo/genetics company. If you want my opinion: Salary sucks in such companies as there are way too many phds out there. Big egos and never built a company... And bios have no clue about good engineering, TDD or CI. It is all copy paste scripts. So don’t compete with bio phds, the money is not worth it. I have studied molec bio and comp science separately and can work in both industries. We talk about 150k vs 100k salary differences. Find an area that interests you like data analytics software in healthcare or something like this and go to a tech company you will thank me.
xvilka 7y ago
You certainly should check the Biostar Handbook[1] then and their forum[2]. BioJulia[3] is worth checking as well (I have really high hopes for Julia language). [1] https://www.biostarhandbook.com/ https://www.biostarhandbook.com/ [2] https://www.biostars.org/ https://www.biostars.org/ [3] https://biojulia.net/ https://biojulia.net/
t_serpico 7y ago
Biotech is a giant field, so it really depends what you want to do. I did my undergrad in CS but spent the past ~4 years working at a molecular diagnostics startup, where I do software engineering/stats/machine learning work. Along the way, I learned a fair deal of biology, the fundamentals of the molecular assays we work with, but more importantly the skills fundamental to science (inquiry, designing experiments, generating new knowledge, skepticism, etc.). Honestly, the biggest transition from CS -> sciences is not the specific biology or understanding of experimental techniques, but rather learning how to think like a scientist. These are skills you probably will not have if you come from a strictly programming background. If you are really serious about starting a biotech company, you will need to get a PhD in an applied or natural science or work at an immature startup with a team of PhDs thats needs programming help and you can hopefully learn the 'scientific' skills you need along the way. If you restrict the space of companies you want to start to be strictly in the bioinformatics space, then you can probably bypass the PhD route, but you'll need to get a job doing that sort of work at a startup. Job descriptions for those roles should tell you what specific skills you would need for that. Also, I would highly recommend becoming good at stats. Thats fundamental to any path you go down, and can be another way for you to provide immediate value to others.
starpilot 7y ago
Does this seem really incongruous to anyone else? It's like a biologist hears something about Linux, and asks about how he can start writing kernel patches having never coded anything in his life. It seems like there's an underlying assumption that computer science >> all other sciences, as if the abstract logic of computer programming is a substitute for basic domain knowledge in other fields, often built over hundreds of years.
- goatlover 7y ago
  You see this often when programmers comment on physics, neuroscience or even philosophy. Everything is understood in terms of computer science and the successes of the computer industry, because obviously reality is fundamentally what programmers spend most of their time on. Which is something Jaron Lanier pointed out a while back. Of course I only mean some programmers, and I'm sure mathematicians and physicists aren't immune to the same temptation. It's natural to understand the world through the lens of what you understand best, but there are other big fields of human knowledge out there.
  - sgillen 7y ago
    I think also they see that the gap between bootcamp grads or smart college dropouts and a masters in CS is not necessarily that large, and assume the same is true for other fields when that is pretty rarely the case.
pfbtgom 7y ago
You may way to look into biotech incubators such as IndioBio[1] to get an idea of what it takes. [1] https://indiebio.co/ https://indiebio.co/
RocketSyntax 7y ago
Read "Genomics & Personalized Medicine; What Everyone Needs to Know"... twice, paired w YouTube videos. Work in the industry for a few years. To be honest, the scientists just need big data + data science + workflows/ pipelines.
strangattractor 7y ago
The Bio tech seen is very credential focused. It is not like standard tech that often welcomes people with other experience. There are several likely reasons for this. 1. An over abundance of Bio Phd's. 2. Medicine in particular is tricky 3. Academics can be a$$Holes 4. They don't pay as well.
pochekailov 7y ago
I have spent 11 years in molecular biology research. I must warn you about a survivorship bias. All the exciting news you are hearing are the tip of a giant iceberg that rests on the mounts of a most dull and repetitive labor. Here are some realities that nobody tells you: 1. There are only 3 operations done in experimental biology: liquid pipetting, opening/closing tubes and moving tubes between machines. 90% of protocols may be reduced to those operations. 2. Just to reproduce an already published work, you need 6 month of 10 hour/day work, performing those 3 operations from point 1. It took 5 years to reproduce just 18 molecular biology papers [https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/effort-to-reproduce-cancer-studies-scales-down-effort-to-18-papers-64593 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/effort-to-reprodu...], while 1 out of 4 computer science papers can be reproduced in less than 30 minutes [http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/]. 3. It takes days, if not weeks, to perform an experiment and make an observation. That is, if you manage to make a mistake in your experiment at day 2, you will only learn that something went wrong at day 6. Often, it is even impossible to tell what went wrong. 3a. Imagine, that after days of coding, you hit "compile", and the compiler would find a typo you made somewhere in your code, and instead of pointing at the error, it would simply delete all your code, and never tell you what was the reason, so you have to start over writing the code from scratch. This is how day-to-day biology work looks like. 4. CRISPR technology is one of the most heavy on 3 operations from point 1. 5. If you ask biologists about how do they feel about doing experiments, 97 out of 100 will say they hate it the most and curse the day they decided to do biology. Regarding starting a company, I would first try to talk to as many as possible industry people, trying to understand what they do day to day and what they find most problematic, difficult or annoying to do, and see what you need to do to solve their problem. In fact, I so much hate the fact, that I spent 15 years studying, then 5 years doing PhD, just so I can spent the rest of my days pipetting liquid. I decided to try to automate away all manual work by creating a universal robotic framework. If you are interested, please check https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/ https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/
- bigmit37 7y ago
  Interesting. It seems automation would greatly speed up this field. I wonder if progress is being made on this front.
daemonk 7y ago
I have a genetics phd and work as a bioinformatician. It takes time for concepts to fully "sink in" in biology. Learning one independent theory/fact/concept is great, but it is when you hook it up to all your other knowledge that it becomes powerful. I would read as much as you can, wait a month, then go back and re-read it. I promise you'll see and think about things you haven't before. The utility, in my opinion, of a phd is that you had 4+ years where you were immersed in this environment and hopefully everything sunk in. Biology is also not as black and white, cause and effect, strictly mechanistic as CS/engineering. Always think about exceptions and grey areas.
freeradical13 7y ago
I'm in a similar boat. I have a bachelors in computer science, 13 years in industry, and I'm fascinated by biology. The other comments are very good, so I'll add things I didn't see mentioned: * In my opinion, you have to get beyond the wow factor and figure out what you want to work on and why, rather than the how (e.g. CRISPR). I spent half a year researching this and my result was an interest in heart disease [1]. * Credentialism in biology is high, as mentioned. I'm currently in an M.S. in General Biology program. I was able to get my work to shift me to part time (20 hours/week) and I found a non-thesis M.S. program which is geared towards part time professionals (a rare program format) which is perfect for me. However, another comment mentioned biochemistry rather than general biology and there is some merit to that point, although I've appreciated the broader perspective of a general program. * If you take the Biology credential path of M.S. or PhD, unless you go the Bioinformatics route, you'll likely need to take the GRE Biology specialty test, which was quite difficult for me with almost no biology background. It took me about 6 months to teach myself [2]. I liked the textbook "Campbell Biology" by Urry et al. as well as others, although I find the lack of citations in textbooks really annoying for the way I learn (following rabbit holes). * Personally, I'm trying to avoid the bioinformatics route because I don't want to just be a tool of some other scientist, but I want to be a scientist myself. This is a hard path and there is some merit to others' comments about joining a biotech startup as a programmer and then transitioning to deeper biology. * In my networking, I see a lot of people going the other way: from biology to computer/data science. Anecdotally, this seems to be largely due to points others raised: lower salary, a glut of PhDs, slow growth and conservatism of the field due to regulation, etc. I don't know where I'll end up exactly, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I think you should scratch your itch if you can. Feel free to email me (email in profile) with questions. [1] https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/raw/master/value_based_prioritization.pdf https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra... [2] https://freeradical13.github.io/ https://freeradical13.github.io/
deleted 7y ago
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pdm55 7y ago
Zack Booth Simpson might be interesting to talk to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-booth-simpson-1084b3/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-booth-simpson-1084b3/ He transitioned from computers to biology.
ewewolfie 7y ago
I find this resource very useful for learning bioinformatics: https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics

222 points by nscalf 7y ago

wonderwonder 7y ago

Not mine but a useful link. Bioinformatics may not be exactly what you are looking for but its a nice bridge between software and biology. https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics

dysoncdn 7y ago

Learn biochemistry not biology

Ultimatt 7y ago
Dunno the context of evolution goes a very long way even on the biochem.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

If you're interested in genetic engineering/CRISPR, check out the following book: Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. He does a fantastic job of layman's writing on science, his other book on Cancer is fascinating and extremely well written, that one is called "Emperor of Maladies". I'd highly recommend both, but don't expect ANY other writing on bio to be that engaging :) https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/1432837818 https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...

iskander 7y ago

I transitioned into cancer immunotherapy research after Computer Science grad school. Biology is a mess and it will take several years to get up to speed on any one research area. The best options are either grad school or finding a job which doesn't initially require a lot of bio background but provides the opportunity to learn. It's also worth checking out local biohacker spaces, they can teach some basic techniques but you'll hit a ceiling quickly. To really "start a biotech company" you'll really need to spend a long time outside your comfort zone.

el_cujo 7y ago

Your best bet is probably to look for a co-founder with an MS or PHD in molecular biology rather than trying to get yourself to that level from the ground up. If you have some biology background and just want to understand the specifics of Crispr, you can start with this paper[0] and just google every term you aren't familiar with until you make it all the way through. If you don't know biology at all, this[1] is a common text book in undergrad programs for molecular/cellular biology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23287718 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23287718 [1] https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059 https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/...

rubidium 7y ago

Go find a biotech company hiring software engineers where the biochemists are in the same room/ building. Get a job there. Get to know biochemists and ask them about their work and work problems, listen to their talks, read a lot. Get mentored by a PhD in the field at the company. When a new biotech product team is getting formed get yourself on the project. Whatever you do, don’t compete with biologists.... there’s just too many of them and the lab skills are valuable but in abundant supply.

shpongled 7y ago

I'm in my 5th year of a chemical biology PhD and I'm looking to potentially move into computer science/data science (been programming for 15 years) after I graduate. Maybe we can just switch? I work with CRISPR for my project. In all seriousness, you are going to need a PhD if you want to truly understand all of the background of the field. Human biology/biochemistry is just about the most complex thing humans have ever studied. It would surely be easier to just find people with the requisite skill sets. Even if you just want to start a company, I feel that it would be really hard to pick out a scientific direction/what your company is going to do, without a rigorous scientific background

Ultimatt 7y ago
+1 for this is a PhD level thing. The science and technology is not at the sort of commodity level where you do a masters and you're done really. A good approach is to just get in the face of a lot of lab people working on new tech/IP who could really use software support for what they are doing in an area of trial and error that could otherwise scale. But if you are thinking biotech with lab, you need huge seed investment to begin with for the lab, unless you are spinning out of academia.
tomp 7y ago
Can you explain your reasoning behind need a PhD? It makes sense to me why you should learn a lot to understand a complex field, but I fail to see why you should also spend a few years researching a very narrow subfield... wouldn't it be better to be a generalist and be able to apply your knowledge widely, as opposed to only understanding a tiny sliver of the whole field?
- el_cujo 7y ago
  Yeah I'm not sure I agree you need a full-blown PhD just to understand this stuff. Some-hands on work, definitely. I would say that you need a PhD to be taken seriously as a leader on the science-side of a biotech company though.
  - notus 7y ago

bbgm 7y ago

There are two areas where you can jump in more easily with a CS/software background. Many companies are building informatics/analysis pipelines. That’s likely closer to what you know and you can pick up enough biology along the way. Alternatively there’s a lot of algorithm/classifier development you could jump into. It’s usually easier going the other way though. Biology is a complex beast.

bbgm 7y ago
To be more specific, the first company I worked at had three co-founders; an algorithms person, a functional biology expert, and someone with experience in building software teams. The first two came from academia.
deleted 7y ago
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pvaldes 7y ago

> I'm interested in learning more about the skills needed to start a biotech company, but I'm lacking the masters degree in biology. What skills are actually needed to get into the field You will need two basic skills 1) The skill to understand that trying to manipulate by yourself a delicate and exquisitely calibrated machine without knowing what you do, is a bad idea. There is a fair possibility that you end with either bad products like a method for pursuing suspects based in DNA of a chunk of cut hair (made entirely of cheratin that does not have any DNA). Incorrect biological explanations or a very expensive machine broken are also probable results 2) The skill to hire a trained biologist that will do the job

fabian2k 7y ago

For most of the things you actually do in practice as a scientist in that field you generally need to be trained by someone that knows the particular area of biology and the specific methods you're using. It's not just about the general background knowledge, which is certainly important, but on top of that you need specific experience for each specialized area you work in. Biology is a vast field, and there is simply an enormous amount to learn. And you also need to understand the methods and techniques used to perform experiments, which can get pretty deep into physics at times, and requires a lot of very specialized knowledge for many of the more complex methods. Statistics is also important for many types of experiments. It's really not easy and fast to gain the necessary knowledge, people in the field generally have a bachelor/master and a PhD, and that is the start of your scientific career.

baron_harkonnen 7y ago

Right now I know a ridiculous amount of people with bio phds from top tier schools that are trying to make it as data scientists. I don't think there is a bio revolution like the software revolution that is happening quite yet. I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do. All of the interesting jobs around that space are still largely tech jobs.

cryoshon 7y ago
>I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do. yep, that's why i left the industry. the companies know that the science staff are willing to work for less, so long as they have the opportunity to do what they're interested in. so they end up working for much less.
firstplacelast 7y ago
Same thing I've witnessed. I was in the industry for almost a decade and worked on the computational side for half that time, then left for a DS role in an unrelated industry. Everyone I knew that had halfway decent programming/math skills ended up leaving eventually. The pay differential for what your skills can bring you in other industries is massive. There's so many interesting things going on in biotech, but they're always on the horizon and are likely decades from any commercial product (synthetic bio, DNA as data storage, etc). On top of that, no one gets super rich from equity at a start-up unless you are an exec. If you're lucky and pick the right pony when it's under 30 employees and spend a decade there until a massive IPO, you'll at most get a couple 100k's. Employees in biotech are not valuable enough to get big paydays. Also, you're likely working on products, that if successful, will help people live longer. So when you're already not paid enough to buy the cheapest home in your city, you're at best ensuring those old folks who already have homes will live longer and make your home ownership dream less likely.

tito 7y ago

Check out Benchling! YC company (S12), founded by a CS undergrad from MIT. [1] Learn more about their story. Biotech is growing so fast. There’s tons of room for scientists and non-scientists alike. Programmers have a lot to add here, even with zero bio background, the power of a fresh mind. Talk with scientists and learn what problems they have. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sajith-wickramasekara https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sajith-wickramasekara

iongoatb 7y ago

I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determines how skilled you become. If you have strong CS skills then you should: 1) Focus on bioinformatics. You will immediately be of use as far as making your own product/service or working for a startup if you apply your skills there. Most bio specialists are incredibly weak at data analysis and/or any type of computing. Pretty much all the important problems in bio are computational in nature. The "impressive" bio researchers/scientists have the data science skills of a sub-par / average data scientist / CS grad. 2) Create a home lab or find one / start one locally. Look up the odin project. Work on DIY genetic engineering and you can even take classes from that site. If you just get to this point and stop you will literally have more practical skill and knowledge than the vast majority of graduates with bio degrees. 3) Lots of biohackers experiment with themselves for clout/hype/attention. It never ends well. There are plenty of lab organisms that you can easily source and ethically experiment with. 4) Don't listen to anyone that tells you that you can't do something because you don't have a PhD. Those are the same type of people that missed out on the computing and internet revolutions because they were busy doing trivial academic work.

Odenwaelder 7y ago
1) Not enough for starting a biotech startup as OP would like to do. Having a PhD means that you've spent years on a certain subject. You cannot just read a book and be up to speed on biomedical research and CRISPR. 2) Having hands-on experience in wet labs is useful and relatively easy to learn. People can learn wet lab skills sufficient to carry out experiments (i.e. pipetting stuff together) in under a year. This is not what research is about though. 3) True 4) You don't need a PhD. But to truly succeed in biology, you need to learn things from the ground up, which takes years of studying. If you just read a few books, you will be able to understand certain parts of it, but as a founder of a biotech startup, you will be the equivalent of a tech startup founder blindly following buzzwords such as "blockchain".

bioinformatics 7y ago

I would start with genetics and genomics, then add some protein knowledge and focus on the techniques that rely mostly on informatics/bioinformatics, like Next-Generation Sequencing, chromatography and similar. Add some evolution and phylogenetic, which with a mathematical background should be straightforward to grasp.

cryoshon 7y ago

my background is in biotech and i've worked at a small handful of biotech startups in a scientific capacity. here's my advice: unless you have friends who can set you up with the right VCs and ensure that they will be willing to overlook your lack of experience and IP, don't bother. you're not going to get up to speed working in the lab on your own in any short amount of time. learning the theoretical stuff that you need to know won't take long, but you probably won't understand how to use the theory to make something novel until you've spent time in the lab. and you won't know how to vet the ideas of people with phds, either. then there's the elephant in the room: risk. biotech is extremely risky because drug development is difficult even under ideal conditions. making "niche drugs" is even more difficult than making drugs for the mainstream because niche diseases won't have as much of the scientific background already researched when you sit down to try to come up with a useful therapy concept. if you want to talk in more depth about the skills which are actually needed to get into the field in a scientific or a business capacity, i've advised someone who reached out to me here on HN about that exact topic in the past, and i'm more than happy to discuss it with you via email. check out my profile if you're interested.

cft 7y ago
But here's the question: maybe you can become a provider of highly optimized big data processing or data visualization software, without deep knowledge in biology?
- cryoshon 7y ago
  you probably can, but it's hard to know what will be in demand without doing a lot of customer interviews with the people who would need your service.
  - cft 7y ago
    Where is the best place to meet the right people? I talked to my friend (PhD) and she explained the process of conversion from Illumina file formats all the way to numpy , but I would love to know more.

teekert 7y ago

I'm a self-taught bio-informatician (working at large healthcare company, doing Next Generation Sequencing related things). although I am actively seeking to better myself, My code is horrible, we have one "library" (a file really) full of functions and since 2 months a couple of classes that I already feel like completely re-writing. A lot of code is in Jupyter Notebooks somewhere because we just got the hang of Git last year, let alone proper branching. Pull requests? Yes I've heard of them. Transferring code to partners is always troublesome. Man I wish we would have had a proper code-writer on board from the very start, bonus points if that someone excited about biology! So bring it on I say! Just apply to any mayor classical bio-company. I mean biologists need to become data-scientists and computer scientists more and more, and they can use a lot of help. For example: During my internship in 2003 I did DNA sequencing, I spend all day making a gel and loading it and I read 200 basepairs of DNA of a printed paper to check my results. Today we have an Illumina sequencer in the lab, it produces 60 billion basepairs every couple of days. We are nowhere anymore without computers and computer scientists.

unearthed 7y ago
I love git. Literally the only way to be productive when you've got more than 4 people touching code. Do you guys allow remote work?
- teekert 7y ago
  I work from home sometimes, and 1 of our team members is in the US (but still at the same company). We have no people completely isolated that never come into the office.
  - unearthed 7y ago
    I know for programmers / coders its a weird question but what about part time?
    - teekert 7y ago
      Why is this a weird question? I work 90% (36 hours) many of my colleagues work 32. In the Netherlands (in my bubble) it seems almost standard for both parents to go to 32 (4x8) and both have one non-weekend day with the kid(s).

aaavl2821 7y ago

I'm not a scientist but have worked in biotech in VC, started a venture backed therapeutics company, and worked with the life sci group of a FAANG. Having a PhD is not essential -- I know many successful VCs, founders and operators without PhDs -- but you absolutely need an appreciation of science. People like to hire PhDs because they have a fundamental knowledge of biology and or chemistry and they have deep experimental experience in a specific domain. Without that experience doing experiments it's hard to really understand the challenges of science and rigor required. That said not all PhDs give you that, and academic science tends to be less rigorous than industry science Also, developing a drug requires PhD level experience in many domains and no one person can do it all. A neuroscience PhD won't necessarily qualify you to review tox data. You need people who can quickly get up to speed on various technical fields, find experts and have productive conversations with them You need to understand the drug development process at a basic level. There are lots of articles about this online, here's one I wrote [0] You need to understand how to evaluate and critique scientific and clinical data. It is easier to start by looking at clinical data. You can learn to analyze this data without a PhD if you spend time with it and ideally have a mentor. Here is a case study I wrote on basic concepts in evaluating clinical data [1] Evaluating preclinical or scientific data is much harder. In nonhuman studies you are measuring more endpoints with less direct relationship to human disease in more contrived systems. The experiments also tend to be less rigorously designed, executed and documented (at least in academia) so there are all kinds of pitfalls to avoid that you can't really know without experience. This is where a PhD really helps To start learning this just struggle through papers. Find a paper that interests you and read it in depth. Learn what each experiment and instrument does. Learn what each molecule does. Here's an example I wrote translating a synthetic biology paper into layman studies terms to give you a sense of what goes into reading a paper [2] If you have a scientist friend who can walk you through papers that speeds up the process by orders of magnitude and you can learn so much At first read for comprehension. Then read with a critical eye. Why did they do this experiment instead of this other one? Are they missing an important control here? Is this model robust? Are the conclusions they draw stronger that what the data suggest? Learn how drugs are valued. Valuation is different in biotech than any other sector. Drugs don't have revenue or users for years. A drug can. A worth $10B before FDA approval. Value in biopharma comes from reducing technical risk. I wrote a post about that here [3]. Most biotech founders lack either the science or business knowledge needed. It is easier to learn the business stuff so that can let you add value to a company while learning more about the science [0] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/drug_dev_process.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/drug_dev_process.html [1] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/aducanumab-analysis https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/aducanumab-analysis [2] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/synbio-laymans-terms.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/synbio-laymans-terms.html [3] https://www.baybridgebio.com/drug_valuation.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/drug_valuation.html

hprotagonist 7y ago

Mostly, my advice as a biomedical researcher and modeler/software user is this, which is not skills based at all and is instead just a reminder that you're going to need a really fundamental shift in thinking. Get the notion that "biology is a computer that we can fundamentally and totally understand at the level that we understand Church-Turing" out of your head as soon as possible because it is incorrect. Biological systems are complex, they are deeply nonlinear, we do not even come close to understanding the functional behavior of their components (or, indeed, what those components even ARE) the way we can understand transistors or chips or API specs, etc. The sooner you get used to believing that "I can't prove anything, but we have a pile of mostly not contradictory evidence that suggests that most of the time this idea is a pretty good heuristic and our error bars are reasonable", the better you'll do and the saner you'll remain. Some recommended worldview reading for you: The Andy Grove Fallacy: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/andy_grove_rich_famous_smart_and_wrong http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/and... Can A Biologist Fix A Radio: https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.pdf https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p... Can A Neuroscientist Understand A Microprocessor https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... And if you like, I can provide a basically endless stream of papers of the form "we thought X did Y and we knew what X was; it turns out that X actually does Q, it also turns out we don't know why X does anything at all, but when we do X we sometimes get Y so we've been confused for the past 50 years"

tikej 7y ago
So much this. I think the most difficult thing about transition from hard sciences such as cs/physics/math to wet science such as biology/sociology/psychology is to get used to the fact that sometimes things don't work and behave as expected and it takes enormous amount of work to get it right. Therefore you can't really go and design things form the first principles, since first principles are not really that well known. Of course you can try, and get some successes but that is rare. Add extremely complicated AND nonlinear dependences between the systems you are working with and you may get idea why we still don't have cure for most cancers yet.

derekja 7y ago

Where are you located? A lot of places now have community biology labs in makerspaces that are doing really fun things. Start here: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Hackerspaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Hackerspaces Not all of the places on that list will have biology labs, but some will! It's a good way to get some experience at the bench without going the degree route.

mindcrime 7y ago
The hackerspaces.org link is good, but to add to that, here is a list that is specifically "biohacker" groups/spaces. https://diybio.org/local/ https://diybio.org/local/ For anybody in/near the Research Triangle Park area of NC, there is Tri-DIY-Bio, a pretty active DIY bio group. http://www.tridiybio.org/ http://www.tridiybio.org/

sxv 7y ago

"Getting started in biology" and "starting a biotech company" to me are opposite ends of a continuum, akin to "learning how to walk" vs "training for a marathon". I made the transition from web dev to bioinformatics five years ago and while I have a good job in academia, I wouldn't dream of starting a bioX company without a bioX cofounder.

jchallis 7y ago

Join Lucence. Our dry lab and wet lab work are world class and you will learn in the context of real problems for real patients with real samples. We are hiring in SF and Singapore for informatics roles.

delinquentme 7y ago
contact info?
- jchallis 7y ago
  Email your CV and a paragraph on your interest to: hr at lucencedx.com Bonus points for citing our active jobs page: https://www.lucencedx.com/careers/ https://www.lucencedx.com/careers/
  - delinquentme 7y ago
    Generic HR inbox? I don't think you're actually concerned about this.

boltzmannbrain 7y ago

Biotech startup school: https://www.baybridgebio.com/biotech-startup-school.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/biotech-startup-school.html

esel2k 7y ago

I lead projects with software and bioinformaticians in one of the worlds top bioinfo/genetics company. If you want my opinion: Salary sucks in such companies as there are way too many phds out there. Big egos and never built a company... And bios have no clue about good engineering, TDD or CI. It is all copy paste scripts. So don’t compete with bio phds, the money is not worth it. I have studied molec bio and comp science separately and can work in both industries. We talk about 150k vs 100k salary differences. Find an area that interests you like data analytics software in healthcare or something like this and go to a tech company you will thank me.

xvilka 7y ago

You certainly should check the Biostar Handbook[1] then and their forum[2]. BioJulia[3] is worth checking as well (I have really high hopes for Julia language). [1] https://www.biostarhandbook.com/ https://www.biostarhandbook.com/ [2] https://www.biostars.org/ https://www.biostars.org/ [3] https://biojulia.net/ https://biojulia.net/

t_serpico 7y ago

Biotech is a giant field, so it really depends what you want to do. I did my undergrad in CS but spent the past ~4 years working at a molecular diagnostics startup, where I do software engineering/stats/machine learning work. Along the way, I learned a fair deal of biology, the fundamentals of the molecular assays we work with, but more importantly the skills fundamental to science (inquiry, designing experiments, generating new knowledge, skepticism, etc.). Honestly, the biggest transition from CS -> sciences is not the specific biology or understanding of experimental techniques, but rather learning how to think like a scientist. These are skills you probably will not have if you come from a strictly programming background. If you are really serious about starting a biotech company, you will need to get a PhD in an applied or natural science or work at an immature startup with a team of PhDs thats needs programming help and you can hopefully learn the 'scientific' skills you need along the way. If you restrict the space of companies you want to start to be strictly in the bioinformatics space, then you can probably bypass the PhD route, but you'll need to get a job doing that sort of work at a startup. Job descriptions for those roles should tell you what specific skills you would need for that. Also, I would highly recommend becoming good at stats. Thats fundamental to any path you go down, and can be another way for you to provide immediate value to others.

starpilot 7y ago

Does this seem really incongruous to anyone else? It's like a biologist hears something about Linux, and asks about how he can start writing kernel patches having never coded anything in his life. It seems like there's an underlying assumption that computer science >> all other sciences, as if the abstract logic of computer programming is a substitute for basic domain knowledge in other fields, often built over hundreds of years.

goatlover 7y ago
You see this often when programmers comment on physics, neuroscience or even philosophy. Everything is understood in terms of computer science and the successes of the computer industry, because obviously reality is fundamentally what programmers spend most of their time on. Which is something Jaron Lanier pointed out a while back. Of course I only mean some programmers, and I'm sure mathematicians and physicists aren't immune to the same temptation. It's natural to understand the world through the lens of what you understand best, but there are other big fields of human knowledge out there.
- sgillen 7y ago
  I think also they see that the gap between bootcamp grads or smart college dropouts and a masters in CS is not necessarily that large, and assume the same is true for other fields when that is pretty rarely the case.

pfbtgom 7y ago

You may way to look into biotech incubators such as IndioBio[1] to get an idea of what it takes. [1] https://indiebio.co/ https://indiebio.co/

RocketSyntax 7y ago

Read "Genomics & Personalized Medicine; What Everyone Needs to Know"... twice, paired w YouTube videos. Work in the industry for a few years. To be honest, the scientists just need big data + data science + workflows/ pipelines.

strangattractor 7y ago

The Bio tech seen is very credential focused. It is not like standard tech that often welcomes people with other experience. There are several likely reasons for this. 1. An over abundance of Bio Phd's. 2. Medicine in particular is tricky 3. Academics can be a$$Holes 4. They don't pay as well.

pochekailov 7y ago

I have spent 11 years in molecular biology research. I must warn you about a survivorship bias. All the exciting news you are hearing are the tip of a giant iceberg that rests on the mounts of a most dull and repetitive labor. Here are some realities that nobody tells you: 1. There are only 3 operations done in experimental biology: liquid pipetting, opening/closing tubes and moving tubes between machines. 90% of protocols may be reduced to those operations. 2. Just to reproduce an already published work, you need 6 month of 10 hour/day work, performing those 3 operations from point 1. It took 5 years to reproduce just 18 molecular biology papers [https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/effort-to-reproduce-cancer-studies-scales-down-effort-to-18-papers-64593 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/effort-to-reprodu...], while 1 out of 4 computer science papers can be reproduced in less than 30 minutes [http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/]. 3. It takes days, if not weeks, to perform an experiment and make an observation. That is, if you manage to make a mistake in your experiment at day 2, you will only learn that something went wrong at day 6. Often, it is even impossible to tell what went wrong. 3a. Imagine, that after days of coding, you hit "compile", and the compiler would find a typo you made somewhere in your code, and instead of pointing at the error, it would simply delete all your code, and never tell you what was the reason, so you have to start over writing the code from scratch. This is how day-to-day biology work looks like. 4. CRISPR technology is one of the most heavy on 3 operations from point 1. 5. If you ask biologists about how do they feel about doing experiments, 97 out of 100 will say they hate it the most and curse the day they decided to do biology. Regarding starting a company, I would first try to talk to as many as possible industry people, trying to understand what they do day to day and what they find most problematic, difficult or annoying to do, and see what you need to do to solve their problem. In fact, I so much hate the fact, that I spent 15 years studying, then 5 years doing PhD, just so I can spent the rest of my days pipetting liquid. I decided to try to automate away all manual work by creating a universal robotic framework. If you are interested, please check https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/ https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/

bigmit37 7y ago
Interesting. It seems automation would greatly speed up this field. I wonder if progress is being made on this front.

daemonk 7y ago

I have a genetics phd and work as a bioinformatician. It takes time for concepts to fully "sink in" in biology. Learning one independent theory/fact/concept is great, but it is when you hook it up to all your other knowledge that it becomes powerful. I would read as much as you can, wait a month, then go back and re-read it. I promise you'll see and think about things you haven't before. The utility, in my opinion, of a phd is that you had 4+ years where you were immersed in this environment and hopefully everything sunk in. Biology is also not as black and white, cause and effect, strictly mechanistic as CS/engineering. Always think about exceptions and grey areas.

freeradical13 7y ago

I'm in a similar boat. I have a bachelors in computer science, 13 years in industry, and I'm fascinated by biology. The other comments are very good, so I'll add things I didn't see mentioned: * In my opinion, you have to get beyond the wow factor and figure out what you want to work on and why, rather than the how (e.g. CRISPR). I spent half a year researching this and my result was an interest in heart disease [1]. * Credentialism in biology is high, as mentioned. I'm currently in an M.S. in General Biology program. I was able to get my work to shift me to part time (20 hours/week) and I found a non-thesis M.S. program which is geared towards part time professionals (a rare program format) which is perfect for me. However, another comment mentioned biochemistry rather than general biology and there is some merit to that point, although I've appreciated the broader perspective of a general program. * If you take the Biology credential path of M.S. or PhD, unless you go the Bioinformatics route, you'll likely need to take the GRE Biology specialty test, which was quite difficult for me with almost no biology background. It took me about 6 months to teach myself [2]. I liked the textbook "Campbell Biology" by Urry et al. as well as others, although I find the lack of citations in textbooks really annoying for the way I learn (following rabbit holes). * Personally, I'm trying to avoid the bioinformatics route because I don't want to just be a tool of some other scientist, but I want to be a scientist myself. This is a hard path and there is some merit to others' comments about joining a biotech startup as a programmer and then transitioning to deeper biology. * In my networking, I see a lot of people going the other way: from biology to computer/data science. Anecdotally, this seems to be largely due to points others raised: lower salary, a glut of PhDs, slow growth and conservatism of the field due to regulation, etc. I don't know where I'll end up exactly, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I think you should scratch your itch if you can. Feel free to email me (email in profile) with questions. [1] https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/raw/master/value_based_prioritization.pdf https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra... [2] https://freeradical13.github.io/ https://freeradical13.github.io/

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pdm55 7y ago

Zack Booth Simpson might be interesting to talk to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-booth-simpson-1084b3/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-booth-simpson-1084b3/ He transitioned from computers to biology.

ewewolfie 7y ago

I find this resource very useful for learning bioinformatics: https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics