
 Rosalind is a platform for learning bioinformatics through problem solving. - nkurz
http://rosalind.info/problems/as-table/
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shuaib
I wonder what are the potential career choices in bioinformatics for a
computer science major who hasn't taken many biology/chemistry/genetics
courses. Any insight?

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tom_b
I work on a bioinformatics team in a research environment and have _no_ bio
coursework/background. There is a ton of standard IT work here.

I do mainly data integration and standard reporting stuff. For example,
reports for "where is my sample in the pipeline, has the fastq been generated,
where are the variant call results?" But being interested in the bio/genetics
stuff is a huge plus. Hackers in the space seem welcome and needed. You gotta
fight the credential hierarchy some - you clearly don't matter as much as the
MD/PhD, but sometimes they should listen to you, like when, say, it comes to
the programming language choice you make for the app they will use. That said,
I sneak in what I think is best for the task and if that means Ruby or Clojure
instead of Java, results are what matters in the end.

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buss
I work at Counsyl, a pre-pregnancy genetic testing company, and I can confirm
that there is a ton of work for people not versed in bio. Everything from
assay & sequencing visualization tools to more traditional IT challenges like
"How do we manage the huge amount of data coming off the seq machines?" --
which is terabytes per day.

I don't have a bio background so I work on software tools and automation to
support the rest of the company. Counsyl has huge respect for all levels of
science and engineering, so you don't face a credential hierarchy everywhere
(but Counsyl is probably unique in this area). We have a strong solve-
problems-with-software culture that any dev would be comfortable with.

If the gp is interested, check out <https://www.counsyl.com/jobs/>

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cing
I'd like to see a similar site for problem solving in computational chemistry
and physics.

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trimber
Anyone know of any other good online ressources to learn more about
bioinformatics? I think its a fascinating topic and have been meaning to learn
more about it for a while now.

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amitutk
Don't start with organic chemistry or genetics unless you have a 5-year plan.
Basic understanding of molecular biology (structure of DNA, central dogma,
etc.) will be enough to get started. Finally, here is a book (1) that
describes many algorithmic problems in bioinformatics that a techie could
relate to.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics-
Algorithms...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics-Algorithms-
Computational-
Molecular/dp/0262101068/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352461270&sr=8-2&keywords=algorithms+in+bioinformatics)

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noselasd
Nice. But I can't wget the datasets. There's magic behind the "Download
Dataset" button for each of the problem sets - that's quite annoying
programming via an ssh connection.

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superbobry
This is because the datasets are unique for each user, so you need to login
first, and then download the dataset.

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noselasd
Sure, but that's no reason to not make the URLs available for logged in users.

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minikomi
A lot of the early ones are good for testing your linux-fu I'm finding :) Very
cool & interesting

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ig1
Similar to Project Euler except for bioinformatics

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Vivtek
Good Lord, these are like fun little programming potato chips.

 _Update:_ Aaaaaand then they get to be fun _big_ potato chips.

