Carrier in Bioinformatics
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Friday, 08 February 2008 17:59 UTC
In past there is lot of hype about bioinformatics. This is the reason in last 5 years, we have many universities in India which are offering degree/diplomas (M.Sc., B.Sc., B.Tech, etc. ) in bioinformatics. Interestingly most of universities do not have trained bioinformaticians still they are able to attract lots of students. Probable students are comparing bioinformatics with information technology and jumping in this field. We are also getting news that students are facing problem in finding the jobs. I have little knowledge about scope of bioinformaticians in industry but I know there is lot of scope in research or academics. I wants to know others view on “Carriers in Bioinformatics” particularly industry and problems faced by bioinformatics students.
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Anonymous
I myself am a student of Bioinformatics,completed M.Sc with Bioinformatics.I can very well understand the problems for the bioinformatics students.As its an emerging field,well trained faculty is not avialable in the universities and at the end of the day wen a bioinformatician comes out from such institutes the expectations are so high,that the student could’nt match up with that.In teh companies the intake of bioinformaticians required is very low,as this field is still emerging but in the research labs their is a vast scope for this subject.As in premire institutes of the country nd labs are there with bioinformatics labs and learned faculties.If one wants to persue a career in research field there is a scope for this subject.But still India has a long long way to go in this field.
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Let me start my opinion with Raghava’s statement: “In india by tradition we prefer to work in one or two area due to two reasons i) its difficult to learn a new area. ….”. It’s quite understandable that bioinformatics will not survive without the “bio” part. Without a strong and valid question in biology you can never develop a informatics tool to solve any novel problem. The root problem lies in our basic science education and more precisely how biological research works in India.
Let me give my personal experience. After finishing my MSc in agriculture, I tried many different so-called famous Indian institutes in plant biology for my PhD (after clearing CSIR NET twice). Then I realized that almost all (except few) Indian institutes/faculties are either doing almost the same thing they did few decades ago in US-EU (as a PhD or Postdoc there) or are trying to prove someone’s else research abroad. Almost no one have any vision, have any new idea. So it’s not surprising that Plant Biotechnology in India became synonymous to tissue culture, cloning and expressing Bt gene (to make insect resistant transgenic crop) and few other very traditional and well established technologies (I am avoiding to use the term “research” here). No new or novel idea is regenerated and/or appreciated in biological research there, so far I know. After wasting few years in few so-called famous Indian institutes, I joined ETH, Zurich. There, for the first time, I realized what actual research means, how it’s different from “technology” and how “technology” is different from “techniques”.
While I was there, my wife joined me there. She is from hardcore informatics background. During that time my PhD supervisor, Prof W Gruissem was conceptualizing “genevestogator” (https://www.genevestigator.com/gv/index.jsp). Why was he interested to do that? Because his lab was/is highly involved and very productive in proteomics and genomics research (I was not involved in that area though). They felt the limitation of existing technology, mainly to correlate gene-chip and micro array data with individual gene expression profile under different “treatments”. He used the IT experience of my wife and started building the online resource which ultimately gave rise to “genvestigator”. The same logic is applied to many other biological research groups around the world. They first ask the scientific question and then start looking for answers, start developing tools of bioinformatics to solve specific problems. There are many groups in India who are doing great crystallography or protein modeling. To some extent, I know Nobel laureate Prof (Gunter) Blobel’s work. They also do crystallography and protein modeling. But they do it for a very specific purpose. They are famous not for those tools/bio-informatics but for solving those specific scientific/technological problem. In India, majority of such informatics faculties have no clue what they would use that for, what scientific question that like to solve. But they (vaguely) try to justify that in very broad way (like drug design, development of novel herbicide etc). In India, we think that we should develop the tool first and then try to find out the problem that can be solved by that tool. So we developed hammer and then start searching nails. Most probably science/research does not work that way, in most of the cases. Unless Indian institutes/faculties develop a strong and original biology research program, there is very less chance that we can do well in bio-informatics.
So far industry is concerned; Bio-informatics will never be as wide spread as traditional IT sector. In this era of high speed internet and many open access online software; it does not make much sense to develop the same software for one or few specific labs. Although the demand for such informatics solution is very high but that will not be translated into more jobs. I can not clone my gene of interest online, or I can not share my core research online but I surely can do all the predictions and analysis of data online. This very fact will restrict the career opportunity for bio-info professionals in industry. Unless we discover new areas of research, innovate novel technology- the career opportunity will not grow much. And India has a long way to go, very tough reforms to implement to achieve that goal. -
In continuation to my previous post I like to add that Indian Bio-Informatics can do much better if they find productive collaborations. But again Indian (and to some extent in other countries as well) research ethos does not support such inter-disciplinary approach. Most of the Indian faculties like to grab all the credits to themselves without giving due credit to others. It’s not much different in other developed countries, but they have money and other resources to get that job done within their own group/institute, which is not possible in Indian scenario in general. The quality of the drug development research can be greatly improved by a productive and true collaboration among different scientists involving molecular biologist, immunologist, pharmacologist and bioinformatician etc. If a faculty with a specific specialization wants to do it alone, then there is not much we can expect from such effort in such a complex area of research. The same is true for many other areas of research as well. Even in private industries in India, group leaders of different groups are not much interested to cooperate with his/her colleagues from different groups. They paint a very rosy picture with talks of great possibilities using only their own field of specialization. One old saying is: “if you have a hammer, every problem resembles a nail”.
I was not much surprised to witness that one person worked in RNAi field as a postdoc abroad indicated that RNAi can cure practically any human disease! He got the job with his excellent power point presentation. Many other candidates do the same with their expertise and portray their gene/protein as great targets to cure diseases. They get jobs. Company people are very happy to hear such great promises. Unfortunately they can not evaluate that promising “technology”, as they themselves are not subject matter specialists and those people on whom such captains of Indian industries depend are also not really a trained, honest scientist (despite the fact that many of them possess heavy weight degrees). Once such “promising” scientists are recruited, they are reluctant to collaborate with other people and share the glory/success. They are mostly scared to share the secret of their gene/protein/technique etc. After few years, they come out with nothing but more promises; but no real product or technology. Miniscule administrative/technical successes are magnified, nation-wide advertised by PR division of the corporate house by bribing local media. Then we learn that glorious days of science and research in India are just at the corner, through newspapers and TV reporting. And at last, when company realizes (or before that) such promising scientist go to another company with few more years as experience and few more thousands/lakhs rupees salary, simply by portraying a brighter picture, some more possibility. According to one report, the average life of a corporate scientist in India is about 5-10 years in the same organization. Then they change company. Yet they are very reluctant to collaborate. In the process, the businessman who was convinced by someone else to invest in biotechnology/bioinformatics gets frustrated and walks away from that sector to invest on something that he knows better and the reputation of a “scientist” is shattered for ever, at least to him.
In reality, it’s very unfortunate situation in knowledge-based industries in India (both in IT and BT). India is now used more and more by multinational companies to get their routine jobs done. This situation is slowly spreading to public education and research sector as well. It’s a very frightening dream that India is becoming a knowledge based colony of foreign corporate houses and universities. I wish I am wrong.In short, Indian scientists should learn to take part more in productive collaborations and share the glory and other rewards. All scientists including bioinformaticians will be greatly benefitted by that.
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Raghava Bhai,
Bioinformatics is a good field that should now mature in India with the advent of new sequencing technologies (454, solexa and so on) whereby a wealth of nearly 2000 different genomes became available in the public domain. This is enough a canvas for both experienced and amateur bioinformaticians in India to join forces and make career opportunities for themselves. However, the problem is that many Indian Bioinformatics expert did not advance beyond creating web-servers, portals, databases and tools. This is not doing science. Also, there is no doubt that wet-lab work should be combined with theoretical predictions as the latter approach alone is not acceptable any where. As far as Bioinformatics industry in India is concerned, we did not hear anything in recent times after the famous BioSuite was launched by the Tata Consultancy Services. I heard somewhere that Satyam Computers had opened up a bio-IT department but really there is no news where it sunk after Satyam took a plunge recently.
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More and more Bio-info algorithms are being developed through public funding projects from agencies like NIH, NSF etc in countries like US and EU. Many whole genome projects are done that way and data is available free in public domain. Those groups that are highly involved in such projects are famous for their own research mandates. So they do not hesitate much to distribute such Bio-Info solutions online and free. They are obliged to distribute the product freely among scientific community as part of the grant proposal (funded by public money). It will be tough for Indian research faculties to compete with such original idea and efforts. On the other hand, Indian researchers can very well avail such IT solutions free of cost online. I can remember that we used to buy commercial software like MacVector, GCG etc for daily use in molecular biology work during 1990s. But now, probably, no one buy such product as they can do almost all such sequence analysis and predictions free, online.
On the other hand big MNCs like GE health care, Affimatrix, Biocore etc have their own dedicated IT development team for their own instrument/technology. It does not make much sense for public funded research projects to compete those MNCs and develop software for them. Few bio-Info people are sufficient to support the global business/technology development for such organizations. It’s only the tech support, routine maintenance and date entry that need more IT manpower. It’s mainly those routine jobs (BPO jobs) than come to India. But from research point of view, such jobs are good for nothing, those can never be termed as “research” and Indian research establishment, funding agencies must not target such jobs. Some basic biology and IT education at bachelors level with few weeks training is sufficient to do such jobs efficiently.
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