In my opinion education in statistics or computation gives you a solid foundation for the analysis of ngs data. Msc might also be a good time point to choose this topic. You have the option to develop your own perspective on the topic and learn about the origin of the data on the way using analytical skills that align with your background in math and statistics. It will be helpful to know some biology relevant to the data type. Planning for little bit of extra time for learning biology definitely also helps. Knowledge in using linux is a plus to run some tools, but R is mostly platform independent.
You will find a lot of questions and answers already here or on seqanswers and elsewhere online, and I am sure everyone here will be willing to answer new questions. One of the most important points to consider is to define a good topic together with your supervisor before starting the thesis.
This brings me to the few risks of the endeavor, which come from the fact that there is, as you state, nobody else working on the same topic. So you would possibly not be able to discuss much in detail with other researchers in your group. Writing to strangers on the internet is not always an easy drop in for personal communication and good supervision (not taking the experience of your supervisor into doubt), but I think it is possible in principle, and feasible. This might not necessarily hold for a PhD thesis. On the other hand, your qualification will be in high demand after you have finished.
Trying to come up with the most important contributing factors for a successful thesis, I think I would rank them:
- Motivation-interest
- Supervision
- Group - environment
- Time
- Knowledge-skills (means you know something about the topic already)
As I see it, if the topic is very interesting to you, then it will be a very likely path. There are possibly some steep learning curves involved, but imho, a computational education prepares you better for NGS bioinformatics than a biological education.
I hope this helps, good luck.
Disclaimer: ????predict.future
First, respect and good luck! Second, what you did not mention is how many time you have? do you know the aim of your thesis, or is it a vague task?
Thank you. I have to finish it in 9 months.
Please keep in mind, that I do not know you and whatever I'm going to say reflects my personal opinion, that worked for me but not necessarily it would work for you. Therefore, I'm writing it as a comment, not as an answer :)
Well, take it from someone who has been there, 9 months is pretty good time to learn these stuff, if you have a geneticist on your side, you are a half way already. If you are terrified and have great doubt, give yourself a task that you think you can accomplish in certain time, and test how actually you proceed. For example, installing the tools and get familiar with them. A good start would be to install Ubuntu/Linux, you know that you can install it on a USB stick and use it from there...break the ice with it and try to learn how it works, once you start "working" with Ubuntu start installing the tools one after another. Test yourself how fast you are, how comfortable you are, how confident you are becoming. If none of this is happening, check your heart how hard you want this thing!! I myself is a VERY stubborn ;) , so my advice would be of course to not let your fear win! Be realistic and have a backup plan before starting at the same time if it turns out not plausible to accomplish.
Good luck & respect again!
You are right. I have tried to install samtools on cygwin by the help of the tutorials on the internet to run it on my windows but I couldn't. I will start working on Linux to see if I can install these tools there and work with them. I am very eager to follow this topic because not only does it seem so interesting to me but also I have spent enough time to learn the information about it. I hope I can go well with it. Thanks a lot for your assistance.
If you can post this here, you can do NGS analysis for sure.
Oh, why do you say so? I hope so... let's see how it goes
I say so because, I started it the same way.
I am happy to hear it
Did you recently completely change the content of your first post? I don't see the connection between what is currently written and the reactions below.
@natalia was editing her past original posts and (unintentionally) bumping them up to main page. She knows about this biostars feature now.