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10 Useful Bioinformatics Skills to Have |
Looking for useful bioinformatics skills to acquire, here are ten that might look good on you resume.
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Bioinformatics is all about the way biological information is acquired, managed, structured and communicated. It is data management to the nth degree, combined with communications technology and scientific knowledge, with a dash of computer science thrown in.
Bioinformatics is a highly specialized, technical field. You need a background in both biology and in information management, as well as specialized skills specific to the field of bioinformatics. Here are ten of those skills that it’s good to have.
- Good communications skills. As a bioinformatics specialist, you will be communicating complex data to people with a variety of backgrounds. It’s very much like being a translator. You have to know the languages involved, and you have to be an expert communicator in order to help people understand each other.
- Good teamwork skills. Bioinformatics is not for lone rangers. Researchers can sometimes work independently, but bioinformatics is about information and communication. You will be working on a team with people who have diverse backgrounds and differing areas of expertise. Good teamwork skills are essential.
- The ability to multitask. You will need to be able to handle several complex tasks at a time. This can be a high pressure job with deadlines that have to be met. The ability to multitask will help you manage your job with less stress.
- Flexibility. You may be moved from one project to another as your skills are needed. You may have to put aside a project you are working on to help someone with an urgent request. You may need to stop what you are doing and explain a computer model to a scientist. Flexibility is a key skill to have in bioinformatics.
- A working knowledge of biology and its applications. You don’t have to be an expert in biology, but you do need to know what kind of information you are working with. It is especially useful to know about molecular biology and genetics and to understand recent genetic research.
- Proficiency in computer languages. You need to know basic programming languages like JAVA and HTML, SQL and PERL. Most bioinformatics programming utilizes PERL.
- Skill in data mining. Being able to extract data from multiple resources is invaluable.
- Good data visualization skills. You’ll need to be able to take complex data and interpret it into models and other ways that make it understandable for biologists and other team members.
- Experience with bioinformatics tools, such as Blast, BLAT, sequence analysis algorithms and clustering tools.
- Experience in using bioinformatics resources, such as the UCSC genome browser and Entrez. You’ll need to be familiar with the National Center for Bioinformatics (NCBI) and the database and analysis tools available on their website.
If you have these ten skills, you will have no trouble finding the bioinformatics job you want. You’ll be a valuable member of a team that is doing life-changing research in molecular biology and its applications.
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