Help please - Genomics & Bioinformatics

[Science Noob]

Hello all, this is my first post on the board. I was wondering if somebody could give me a couple pointers. I'm extremely interested in the human genome - what information does it contain, how do you extract that information, and how useful is that information once you have it. I view this as an exciting "frontier" of science, and I'm considering pursuing a career in this subject.

 

For someone who has taken general chemistry and organic chemistry undergraduate courses, what classes/curriculum would you recommend taking in order to gain a deeper understanding of genomics and bioinformatics? In other words, what does the "bridge" look like from taking those two chemistry courses all the way to genomics and bioinformatics?

 

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

 

Science Noob

[ecoli]

chemistry is not out of the question for someone interested in genomics. for example, understanding how genes replicate, the genome is package, etc, all comes down to chemistry. What academic level are you at? Most colleges with a science program offer an intro/undergrad bioinformatics course (or series of courses) these days and someone with a chemistry background would certainly be welcome. That should get you started to see if you want to take it to the 'next level'

[CharonY]

The easiest bridge (in terms of how problems are approached) is probably bottom-up. That would lead from biochemistry to molecular biology. The problem is that the truly "omics" based thinking is (should) be highly physiology dependent, which requires deeper knowledge of cellular physiology and generally a deeper insights about the interconnections at a higher level.

Conceptually that tends to be a bit of a rift between chem and bio.

That being said, being an undergrad gives you more than enough to look into molecular biology and cell biology. The latter tends to be a bit boring at the beginning as it only starts to shine after you are past the fundamentals (though this is probably true for most things).

 

What I really would recommend is picking up books with these topics and see if it is really interesting to you.

Edited July 31, 2012 by CharonY

[Science Noob]

Hi - thanks for the tips, ecoli and CharonY. I appreciate your insight. I guess my question was how much of the omics would "make sense" to someone who just went into those courses with only p-chem and o-chem under their belt (if the subject would intuitively make sense at that high of a level, or instead, w/o the biochem and molecular biology courses in between, you miss out on the insights of how/why thinks work the way the do).

 

I was asking because I want to get to the "good stuff" but don't know if it would be wise to jump ahead too quickly.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Science Noob