Ankit Kumar is a senior software developer and has completed his bachelor’s degree in technology from NIT Durgapur. He has a major interest in bioinformatics and computational biology. He has been kind enough to share some of the major challenges he faced while learning bioinformatics.
I was introduced to bioinformatics during my 6th semester. And now I am considering bioinformatics as my career choice.
The major challenges I faced were:
1. Unable to find an open-source alternative to paid software/tools.
For example, pymol is open source but we don’t have a permissive license.
If you have also faced such a problem you can refer to the list below. This is the list of few free and open-source tools available.
2. Lack of knowledge about open source.
You can get started with open-source through these articles.
3. Unable to find concise information about the working of the tools.
For example in the case of clustal omega, the information regarding the working is available but it is difficult to understand for a beginner.
Here are some examples from which you can learn about the functioning of some tools of bioinformatics.
- Introduction to Bioinformatic Tools
- Multiple Sequence Alignment using Clustal Omega and T-Coffee
- SWISS-MODEL: an automated protein homology-modeling server
These were some of the challenges which Ankit faced while learning bioinformatics. If you have faced such problems you can refer to the list below. It may help you in the journey of bioinformatics to a certain extent.
If you can contribute to any of the topics listed above please feel free to contact newbiesinbioinformatics@gmail.com. You can also join our slack_channel. For knowing more about contribution please check CONTRIBUTING.md.