Bioinformaticians play an important part in data analysis and result interpretation in the field of bioinformatics. However, it is unclear to many what specific role bioinformaticians play day to day. We are often asked by many about what exactly a bioinformatician does. But first, who is a bioinformatician?
Bioinformatician is a skilled person who has knowledge of bioinformatics tools and software and are able to deduce what tools to use and how to implement them for a particular scenario. Most bioinformaticians are very skilled programmers and some may be software engineers. A Bioinformatician is experts in analyzing outputs obtained from different software and tools.
The correct implementation of results is a crucial part of the research that leads to significant conclusions. Some of their essential day to day work of bioinformaticians are mentioned below:
- Bioinformatician develops analytical methods by employing programming languages and statistical approaches for data analysis. [They write computer codes and programs]
- They develop computational tools, pipelines, and databases using their programming experience (focussed ones are known as bioinformaticists).
- Development of novel methods and techniques in bioinformatics utilizing either available resources or by discovering new ones to solve biological problems.
- Maintenance and curation of databases.
- Designing therapeutic drug targets or drug candidates for diseases.
- Implementation of computational tools and methods to interpret biological meaning from the data. For example, the structure and function prediction of proteins from the available sequences and structures.
- To collaborate with experimental biologists or clinical geneticists to understand their requirements in solving biological problems.
- Analyze genomic data using available programs or by developing new ones to fulfill the requirements.
- Collaborate with other bioinformaticians and developers to keep posted.
There are several other such tasks performed by bioinformaticians that widen the horizon in bioinformatics. Fulfillment of many of these objectives requires a bioinformatician to be highly skilled.
A single bioinformatician will work on these objectives set by project requirements according to their expertise in specific areas. Therefore, one duty of bioinformaticians is also to communicate and collaborate with other bioinformaticians and researchers.
