Hi! I'm Tommy Tang
I am a computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over ten years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter! https://github.com/crazyhottommy/getting-started-with-genomics-tools-and-resources
How to keep up with the fast advancing bioinformatics field
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, I have spent the last week at EMBL, Germany attending a panel discussion about data science training in industry. My first time to be at EMBL Heidelberg is beautiful Panel discussion We were asked this question: How do you ensure that what you learn does not become obsolete in 5-10 years? For example, single-cell RNAseq technology is advancing so fast that the commands may become obsolete in 1-2 years. Should you worry? This is my answer. Focus on things that do...
It is not easy
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here. Many of you signed up for this newsletter to learn computational skills. If you ask me the secret of learning it, It is consistent and persistent. In other words, it is not EASY. I want to normalize the feeling of frustration when one just started. I want to say that it is not easy to learn this thing if you are from a different field. mysterious error messages.. Spending hours installing a tool.. Ten years after analyzing the first ChIP-seq dataset, I...
The scariest thing about Bioinformatics
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, It was Halloween! My kids dressed up as Hermione(from Harry Potter), creeper (from Minecraft), and a little red hat. The kids had fun. Even my 2-year-old little red hat is not scared of those skulls and ghost decorations. What is the scariest thing about Bioinformatics? It is finishing that bioinformatics paper after you leave the academic institution. Publishing can take A LONG TIME. I still have a paper dated back to 2018 from MD Anderson under revision.. but...
Learn how to use it to 10x your learning
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Again, a week has passed. I never felt that time had passed so fast until I saw how big my three kids had grown. I can barely carry my 8-year-old daughter (almost 60 lbs!). The world has also changed rapidly since the AI buzz resurged after chatGPT was first released. How does this relate to our bioinformatics learning? We should embrace those AI tools to help us learn faster! AI will not replace a bioinformatician, but someone else who uses AI will Now, I am not...
How do KNN and MNN for label transferring work in Seurat for single cell analysis
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, how does PCA projection work? How do KNN and MNN for label transferring work in Seurat? As promised yesterday, I wrote a long blog post on how I attempt to understand it at a low level. I spent at least 6 hours on it even with the help of ChatGPT:) Read it here! https://divingintogeneticsandgenomics.com/post/pca-projection/ Hope you enjoy it. Happy Learning! Tommy aka. crazyhottommy PS: If you want to learn Bioinformatics, there are four ways that I can help: My...
I regret not doing so
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, How are you doing this week? Are you better than last week in terms of mastering bioinformatics? Curiosity is the best teacher. Always stay curious and learn the new things out there. If you do not know NotebookLM yet, try it out. It turned my blog post on AI and drug discovery into a podcast! Listen to it here https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/6357db4d-2088-453e-bff2-56cb1c09f15a/audio. You can use NotebookLM to research bioinformatics topics. Now let's dive...
How to develop your bioinformatics career or any career
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, It is Saturday again. How was your week? Spend some time to reflect what you have learned. My friend is a great bioinformatician, and he asked for career advice, especially in a competitive job market. My answer is simple: Do great things Treat people well build your reputation You will need to first do great things meaning you should work hard to perfect your skills and publish papers. Take extra steps to help others. Helping others is helping yourself in the...
Develop a data sense
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, It is a beautiful day here. I had a dilemma: should I sit and write this newsletter or go out and play with the kids? I chose the latter. That's why it is a little late when you get this. I love teaching and I also love my family. Today we will talk about how to develop a data sense. What do I mean? It would help if you verified whatever you get from a command by: Some intuition looking at the data with your eyes use a simpler example that you can understand I...
My 2 cents on coding when I was a bioinformatics beginner
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, First of all, welcome all the new subscribers. I hope my little writings can help you to advance your bioinformatics skills. Also, please forward it to your friends if you think this newsletter can help them too! I wrote this post in 2015, and I want to re-share it with you. I was trained as a wet biologist and I started learning coding in April, 2012 with my first ever python book: python programming for absolute beginners. I still remember the days that after...
Resending with real-world examples: You need to master this if you deal with genomics data
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, **The format for the interval figures was messed up. I updated them** Also, I expanded this newsletter to a full blog post with practical examples and solving real-world problems. See here:https://divingintogeneticsandgenomics.com/post/genomic-interval/ Also, watch how I install bedtools with conda here. What's the most common problem you need to solve when dealing with genomics data? For me, it is Genomic Intervals! The genomics data usually represents linearly:...
I am a computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over ten years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter! https://github.com/crazyhottommy/getting-started-with-genomics-tools-and-resources