Genomics and bioinformatics
I spent the last few months learning Bioinformatics, genomics, computational biology and similar stuff from mp3's that I downloaded from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
What was quite cool was that none of the lectures had mentioned Array CGH (Comparitive Genomic Hybridization) yet, and one night, just thinking about how to detect cancer mutations genomically, I independently "invented" it. Although I must confess I was a teensy bit dissappointed when I discovered that it was already invented, I was chuffed to see my idea was valid. Turns out that sequencing the cancer genome is now a big project, on a similar scale to the Human genome project. Some critics (e.g. Garth Anderson, a cancer geneticist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo) point out that only the initial mutations are significant, since they allow a higher mutation rate in the cells, and by a kind of "miniaturised" version of evolution/selection, eventually become the dangerous cancer cells.
Some other recent learning:
Recently I found some good stats resources on the web, and I am using AT&T natural voices to convert the text to mp3's, so now I am updating my stats knowledge in my spare time.
A few days ago I read up on and played around a bit with Principle Component Analysis, which looks cool.
Today I am also reading up about Support Vector Machines, which a colleague of mine mentioned to me.
All this in my free time mostly, but it is just so interesting. Would really be cool to be doing this full time, I reckon I would have so much more time to learn this stuff.
What was quite cool was that none of the lectures had mentioned Array CGH (Comparitive Genomic Hybridization) yet, and one night, just thinking about how to detect cancer mutations genomically, I independently "invented" it. Although I must confess I was a teensy bit dissappointed when I discovered that it was already invented, I was chuffed to see my idea was valid. Turns out that sequencing the cancer genome is now a big project, on a similar scale to the Human genome project. Some critics (e.g. Garth Anderson, a cancer geneticist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo) point out that only the initial mutations are significant, since they allow a higher mutation rate in the cells, and by a kind of "miniaturised" version of evolution/selection, eventually become the dangerous cancer cells.
Some other recent learning:
Recently I found some good stats resources on the web, and I am using AT&T natural voices to convert the text to mp3's, so now I am updating my stats knowledge in my spare time.
A few days ago I read up on and played around a bit with Principle Component Analysis, which looks cool.
Today I am also reading up about Support Vector Machines, which a colleague of mine mentioned to me.
All this in my free time mostly, but it is just so interesting. Would really be cool to be doing this full time, I reckon I would have so much more time to learn this stuff.
posted by Randall Britten at 3:12 PM
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