Re: What types of things can I do to get involved in the field of genomics?

Dear questionner,

You're right - genomics is fascinating! And there is plenty that you can do to help.

The "race" to sequence the human genome, between the private Celera corporation and the public Human Genome Project (HGP), was officially declared as a tie. However, for a long time the HGP were trailing behind. They caught up thanks to an amazing piece of software written in a very short time by a researcher named Jim Kent. The software allowed them to assemble DNA sequences very rapidly and accurately. The point of this story is that before entering biology, Jim was originally a computer graphics programmer. So yes - genomics can certainly benefit from people with programming experience!

The key feature of genomics research is data - lots and lots of data, of very diverse kinds. Here are some of the things that genomics researchers need to do:

• Identify functional regions in DNA sequence, such as genes that encode proteins
• Predict functions for genes from their sequence alone
• Generate 3-D structural models of proteins to assist with drug design
• Compare the genomes of different species to figure out why species differ
• Analyse microarray data to understand how genes are switched on and off under different conditions
• Model chemical reactions in the cell to understand metabolism
• Create website portals that integrate all of these different kinds of data so as biologists can search for what they are interested in

The list goes on and on - there is literally no limit to what you can do with the data from genome projects.
OK - here are some specific things that you can do to get involved:

• Get a basic education in biology. You don't need a degree but you need to understand enough basic biology to communicate with biologists. Perhaps you could take some courses at a local college.
• Look at job openings. There are always plenty of advertisements for jobs in computational biology or bioinformatics. Try Nature Jobs, New Scientist Jobs or BioPlanet to see what's out there.
• Get a feel for the literature, to see what problems people are working on. Don't worry if the articles in journals don't make sense at first! You could start by looking at some bioinformatics or genomics journals such as Genome Research, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, Genome Biology and Bioinformatics.
• Explore the web - search Google and have a look at some of the web services offered by the large genomics and bioinformatics centres. These include the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the European Bioinformatics Institute, ExPASy and the Joint Genome Institute.
• Get involved with an open-source project. Genomics, bioinformatics and open-source go hand-in hand. There are projects for many of the major programming languages - Perl, Java, Python, Ruby - under the umbrella of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation.
• Read some bioinformatics-related blogs. This list at Nodalpoint is a good place to start.