Transitioning from wet lab to bioinformatics: My research journey

Sabrina Pei Qin (@PNgsabrina) is a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) research candidate in plant genetics/epigenetics and data analysis at the University of Adelaide. In this story, she talks about her research journey as she transitions from bench-work in a wet lab setting to the field of bioinformatics.

A brief history of big data

I found myself caught in the era of big data in genetics research while I was doing my Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Adelaide. It was around 2016 when I first got introduced to the term “data science” and “big data” in the third year of my genetics course.

The manifestation of big data can be traced back to early 1944 according to a Forbe’s article, A very short history of big data. From what I understand, the increased capacity to generate biological research data demanded that relevant individuals within the field develop the skills and knowledge needed to analyse this data. As a result, new niches for complex biology data analysis emerged, namely bioinformatics and computational biology.

From the lab bench to the computer

My undergraduate practical sessions focused more on essential wet lab techniques which involve running experiments in a lab setting — using both biological samples and chemical reagents — such as western blotting to detect proteins, Polymerase Chain Reactions (PCR) to amplify DNA sequences and CRISPR-CAS gene editing technology to induce gene mutations. At that time, I was involved in a wet lab placement in which I did a lot of PCRs and genotyping. On the other hand, my bioinformatics lectures were mostly theory-based. Back then, coding wasn’t one of my strengths. But, since coding wasn’t an essential part of my practicals, I was able to complete all of the tasks assigned to me.

I was first introduced to coding when I attended an introductory bioinformatics workshop in 2014 — the same year that the University of Adelaide’s bioinformatics hub and our supercomputing system, “Phoenix,” were established. Little did I know that this was the beginning of my transition from bench-work in the lab to bioinformatics i.e., the science of analysing biological data via computational analysis.

My transitional journey

Although I was able to make the transition to the field of bioinformatics, I have to admit that I had a steep learning curve at the beginning. The first hurdle I had to conquer was learning how to code.

Interested to know how Sabrina overcame every challenge and successfully transitioned over to the field of bioinformatics? Read the full story here.