Hello,
I'm a graduate student in information technology. I'm trying to do my research on Bioinformatics, a multi-disciplinary and rapidly emerging field of biomedical data sciences and informatics technologies. but really i'm new to Bioinformatics and also don't know much about Biology. I already read some research papers but still i could not get an idea. please suggest me IT&Bioinformatics research area ?
Bioinfomatics is a wide field covering Sequence alignment from databases, to protein and DNA sequencing algorithms, to database lookups, to big data statistical methods to large scale data sets, to cluster analysis. This doesn't even cover basic signal processing of measurements. Then there is mathematical biology where you model things like signal transduction, metabolic engineering, etc. These models can be deterministic or stochastic. My suggestion is to focus on a math technique that you are comfortable with and then find the biology/analytical method to which it applies. Here are some references to get you started:
Method Mass Spectral Data Processing
Method Isotopic Vector Angle Analysis in Mass Spectrometry v2
Chapter Lac Operon-a Case Study
Gygi et al. (1999) Molecular and Cellular Biology, 19(3):1720-1730
I am big fan of exploratory data analysis.
This is a way of problem solving in which you make your information talk to you and reveal its secrets. You begin with no biased hypotheses and you just make 1 dimensional, 2 dimensional, 3 dimensional charts. Looks for patterns. Do statistical tests, transform the data, hey maybe even sort the p-values for significance and make a volcano plot.
In a senior undergrad class, I had statistics professor who gave me a bunch of anonymized hospital data. Our final project was just to interrogate all of the hospital data and make charts and do statistical tests and tell a story.
Since then I used that skill to probe about hundred thousand protein structures for the energy and frequency of anion-quadrupole interactions. I have also used exploratory data analysis to interview lots of students and make a contour map of their problem solving methods throughout the interview.
I suggest that learning computer science is underrated. You should do it. Learn object oriented programming, learn how to make your own functions. If a virtual tool doesn't exist, just program it yourself. If a program exists but its a piece of junk, just start from scratch and build the application yourself.
Start with learning how to write a hello-word program, then make a hangman game, then learn datastructures (classes, functions, dataframes, matrices, lists, etc), Q-learning and keep amassing your tools until the problems looks easy.
Bioinformatics is a pretty wide field so my suggestion would be to see where and how the IT techniques that intrigue you are applied, and build from there.
I graduated in Computer Science and then started a PhD in AI applied in Structural Bioinformatics. If that's of any interest for you, I'd recommend our introductory chapter on Protein Structural Annotations:
Chapter Protein Structure Annotations
This chapter is part of a book meant for beginners:Book Essentials of Bioinformatics, Volume I
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