11–20 of 84 posts
Really glad to see this, but it reminds me of the earlier HN post that said engineers don't go into genomics because it doesn't pay and requires a lot of investment in learning biology.
Really glad to see this, but it reminds me of the earlier HN post that said engineers don't go into genomics because it doesn't pay and requires a lot of investment in learning biology.
But it's a fun subject, and as the technology develops, middle layers will disappear and then the money from expertise will become better.
The number of people that are both capable software developers and has a good understanding of cellular biology are quite few and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
Nicee, but I feel like really the only thing you need to know as an eng is DNA -> RNA -> Protein. Sometimes RNA -> DNA via reverse transcriptase. Everything else is just normal Python scripting.
Genomics is where I started learning how to program. Having worked as bench scientist in a genetics lab I understood nothing about my lab mates research when they were showing me python scripts of their analysis. Which initially got me curious. Now having been in the in the industry developing apis for large companies for the past 8 years, I’d be keen to get back into it. Any ideas where to start or find jobs in the…
Nicee, but I feel like really the only thing you need to know as an eng is DNA -> RNA -> Protein. Sometimes RNA -> DNA via reverse transcriptase. Everything else is just normal Python scripting.
As soon as you start touching science, everything is important.
1) The Moderna vaccine was made with the help of illumina genome sequencing. They were able to sequence the virus and send that sequence of nucleotides over to moderna for them to develop the vaccine - turning a classically biology problem, into a software problem, reducing the need for them to bring the virus in house.
2) Illumina has a cancer screening test called Galleri, that can identify a bunch of cancers from a blood test. It identifies mutated dna released by cancer cells. This is huge, if we can identify cancer before someone even starts to show symptoms, the chances of having a useful treatment dramatically go up.
Disclaimer: I work for illumina, views my own.
I wrote some more about why genomics is cool from a technical point of view here (truly big data, hardware accelerated bioinformatics) : https://dddiaz.com/post/genomics-is-cool/
Really glad to see this, but it reminds me of the earlier HN post that said engineers don't go into genomics because it doesn't pay and requires a lot of investment in learning biology.
Working with genomics technology is too far away from the money to become rich from. There are too many middlemen in-between technology and application. But it's a fun subject, and as the technology develops, middle layers will disappear and then the money from expertise will become better. The number of people that are both capable software developers and has a good understanding of cellular biology are quite few an…
In biotech, the end goal is a physical product or a service performed by a doctor or another highly paid professional. Those don't scale as well as software. The ratio of users to developers is also low. You are likely developing software for many niche tasks, which does not scale either.
And if you are considering roles in the academia, your productivity is not going to be high enough to justify a competitive salary. Productivity, in monetary terms, is defined by the amount of money you can bring in. Either directly on indirectly. In the academia, that usually means grants. You may be able to argue successfully to a funding agency that one software engineer is worth two postdocs, but not four.
I have absolutely loved working in genomics. I am a huge believer that genomics will be a huge part of healthcare in the future, and i have two examples to motivate that point that I think may be interesting to the reader. 1) The Moderna vaccine was made with the help of illumina genome sequencing. They were able to sequence the virus and send that sequence of nucleotides over to moderna for them to develop the vacci…
"The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country."
I saw a recent Lex Friedman podcast where the guest talks about "bioelectric patterns" and somehow getting a worm to grow a second head by messing with those patterns. I would absolutely start on this course now if it was a realistic pathway to doing something like that.