Visual informatics in molecular biology...?

Question

[uhan]

Hi all,

Would like some opinion/suggestion on this matter...

I am a graduate on molecular biology. My PhD is focused on yeast studies where I did gene knock-out, mutagenesis and screening for potential anti-malaria drugs. Thus, I am familiar with most of the "wet lab" skills for molecular/microbiology.

Recently, I start working with a visual informatics team. However, I felt blank most of the time since I did not understand how to do big data, data mining, gamefication...(some of the terms that they used). It is difficult to ask questions since they are mostly from the visual informatics background itself and did not understand biology.

If anyone had this kind of experience, can you share and give me some idea on how to move forward? I would like to start with a small project that incorporates molecular/microbiology into the visual informatics part, but cant think of any. I also have basic bioinformatics and it is difficult to think of anything suitable.

What would you think of these projects..? -visual screening (in silico) screening of anti-malarial drug (kind of an extension for my PhD project, but this would be more chemical related?) - creating visual molecular lab - digital laboratory book

Kindly help. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

[zjhzwang]

I am undergraduate on bioinformatics, limited by my knowledge, wish my tips will be helpful for you.

• choose one programming language R/Python
  R and python are both useful tools to work with data, and R is more easier to start. For me, I program more by R.
  some resource for beginner:
  r blogges(https://www.r-bloggers.com/)
  R for data science(http://r4ds.had.co.nz/)
  Statistical tools for high-throughput data analysis(http://www.sthda.com/english/)
• learn some about statistics and Linear algebra
  statistics and Linear algebra are used widely in bioinformatics, maybe you should kown some knowledge.

Answer 2

[singh.bioinfo]

Hi, I have also gone through the same problem but never be hopeless. Firstly you have to study the basic structural biology for drug targeted experiment such as the topic molecular docking and dynamics simulations and also learn some software related to docking and visualization.