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I have been wanting to get into bioinformatics, but there's something I miss coming from webdev: the ability to create something over a few weeks. I don't mean

I have been wanting to get into bioinformatics, but there's something I miss coming from webdev: the ability to create something over a few weeks. I don't mean I want to discover something new, and I'm not sure I'd want to get into research at all. I wanted to be able to experiment and see stuff show up on a screen related to the structures and formulas I'm learning. Some fun and practical, even if not very useful (games?), project I can tackle while learning bioinformatics. Is there such a thing?

clarle 14y ago
Rosalind [1] (previously posted on HN) is pretty good for something like a Project Euler for bioinformatics. The problems are pretty similar to the introductory computational biology course at my school for upper-year undergrads and first-year grad students. It's a really good way to get a good overview of the field, and what some of the problems have been already solved in bioinformatics. It's definitely best to combine it with a more traditional textbook such as "Introduction to Computational Biology" (Haubold and Wiehe) or "Biological Sequence Analysis" (Mitchison, Krogh, Durbin, and Eddy). Hope that helps! [1]: http://rosalind.info/ http://rosalind.info/
- Evgeny 14y ago
  Rosalind [1] (previously posted on HN) is pretty good for something like a Project Euler for bioinformatics I think I have a new hobby!
- archgoon 14y ago
  That is absolutely fantastic! Kudos to UCSD and Saint Petersburg Academic University for creating such an awesome educational resource! And thank you for pointing me to it!
- daniel-levin 14y ago
  +1 for this. Rosalind is a great way of improving your knowledge of biology and CS. It is quite cool to see computer science and mathematics problems and techniques applied to bioinformatics.
timr 14y ago
If all you want to do is play around with molecules on a screen, check out PyMol. But here's the rub: if you want to learn "bioinformatics", you're going to have to accept that most of the work is inherently not visual. I worked in about the most shiny, graphical part of biology possible (protein structure), and maybe only 20% of the work involved spinning molecules on a screen. The real work of bioinformatics involves thinking very hard about problems that are deeply mathematical. The visualization part is strictly secondary -- though it gets the most attention, for obvious reasons.

clarle 14y ago

Rosalind [1] (previously posted on HN) is pretty good for something like a Project Euler for bioinformatics. The problems are pretty similar to the introductory computational biology course at my school for upper-year undergrads and first-year grad students. It's a really good way to get a good overview of the field, and what some of the problems have been already solved in bioinformatics. It's definitely best to combine it with a more traditional textbook such as "Introduction to Computational Biology" (Haubold and Wiehe) or "Biological Sequence Analysis" (Mitchison, Krogh, Durbin, and Eddy). Hope that helps! [1]: http://rosalind.info/ http://rosalind.info/

Evgeny 14y ago
Rosalind [1] (previously posted on HN) is pretty good for something like a Project Euler for bioinformatics I think I have a new hobby!
archgoon 14y ago
That is absolutely fantastic! Kudos to UCSD and Saint Petersburg Academic University for creating such an awesome educational resource! And thank you for pointing me to it!
daniel-levin 14y ago
+1 for this. Rosalind is a great way of improving your knowledge of biology and CS. It is quite cool to see computer science and mathematics problems and techniques applied to bioinformatics.

timr 14y ago

If all you want to do is play around with molecules on a screen, check out PyMol. But here's the rub: if you want to learn "bioinformatics", you're going to have to accept that most of the work is inherently not visual. I worked in about the most shiny, graphical part of biology possible (protein structure), and maybe only 20% of the work involved spinning molecules on a screen. The real work of bioinformatics involves thinking very hard about problems that are deeply mathematical. The visualization part is strictly secondary -- though it gets the most attention, for obvious reasons.