

Galaxy Project: Online bioinformatics analysis for everyone - jcr
http://galaxyproject.org/

======
heuermh
Hope no one minds a plug here for the upcoming Bioinformatics Open Source
Conference (BOSC) in Dublin July 10-11, 2015 [0]. Abstract submission is now
open [1].

There is also a free and open invite hackathon called the Codefest July 8-9,
2015 [2]; everyone is welcome to attend.

The BOSC 2014 conference schedule along with videos and slides from most of
the talks is available [3], as are schedules and slides from previous BOSC
conferences.

Many Galaxy developers and users will be there!

[0] [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2015](http://www.open-
bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2015)

[1] [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_Abstract_Submission](http://www.open-
bio.org/wiki/BOSC_Abstract_Submission)

[2] [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Codefest_2015](http://www.open-
bio.org/wiki/Codefest_2015)

[3] [http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2014_Schedule](http://www.open-
bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2014_Schedule)

------
BenderV
I'm interrested in bioinformatics. I would like to know where should I begin ?
Should I take learn the basic of biology before starting or should I approach
it with informatic first (like rosalind appear to be)? Is this link a good
starting point ?

Thanks. (I hope it's not too much off-topic)

~~~
pvaldes
Bioinformatics is mostly about translating and searching in big chunks of
data.

You'll need to study genetics, and also some computer skills, a couple of
programming languages will help a lot.

some links to taste the waters:

Perl is one of the weapons of choice to find things inside big strings of
text:
[http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Not the only tool in the city, of course:
[http://biopython.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://biopython.org/wiki/Main_Page)

[http://www.biolisp.org/](http://www.biolisp.org/)

if you want to use lisp, you'll probably will find useful to be able to use
perl regexes in lisp, several candidates here, but cl-ppcre and optima are
popular

~~~
arca_vorago
I got into bioinformatics as a sysadmin, and loved it. You are right on the
money with your links, but what I would say is to first take the time to learn
the general overview of genetics first. I would have been so lost managing the
data I did if I hadn't taken the time to listen to all the latest lectures on
genomics. I would also encourage a heavy emphasis on bacteria and the
microbiome, it's largely an unexplored wilderness.

------
pvaldes
Access to a cluster of computers online is not a new thing. Bioinformatics
needs powerful machines and many enterprises provide his cloud computing force
for some money.

The question is always the same with this cloudy projects

what about the control of your data?

~~~
arca_vorago
Perhaps you didn't spend very much time reading the site, but Galaxy isn't
cloud only, you can host it yourself.

[https://wiki.galaxyproject.org/Admin/GetGalaxy](https://wiki.galaxyproject.org/Admin/GetGalaxy)

As for the project, I am very interested in seeing how well they do file
manipulation and data handling. My non-compete in the bioinformatics field is
almost up, and I would love to find an open source project to latch onto and
help.

Also, when it comes to bioinformatics, I would say control of data (especially
in research settings) is of paramount importance, so you hit the nail on the
head with that one. I don't think it will be much of an issue though, simply
because the kind of data sizes you have to deal with to do good analysis is so
huge that doing it on a cloud service simply isn't feasible unless you have a
massively fat internet pipe to use.

