Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/sanger-pathogens/ariba/wiki/Task%3A-getref

So, What Is Data Science?
At its core, data science is the interdisciplinary field that extracts knowledge and insights from data using programming, statistics, and domain expertise. In bioinformatics, data science enables us to turn gigabytes of sequence data into biological meaning.

Imagine trying to understand gene regulation in cancer by analyzing thousands of RNA-seq samples, or predicting antibiotic resistance from bacterial genomes—these challenges are not solvable through wet lab experiments alone. They require data-driven thinking.

Data Science Meets Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is inherently a data science domain. From genomics to systems biology, every field in modern biology relies on data science techniques to:

Clean and process massive datasets

Discover patterns in high-dimensional data

Build predictive models (e.g., for disease classification)

Visualize complex biological networks and trends

Integrate diverse data types (e.g., transcriptomic + epigenomic data)

The Bioinformatics Toolkit
Here’s what data science typically looks like in bioinformatics:

Task Data Science Role
Sequence alignment Efficient algorithms, indexing, parallel processing
Gene expression analysis Statistical modeling (e.g., DESeq2, limma)
Variant calling Data filtering, probabilistic models
Clustering of cells in single-cell data Unsupervised learning
Protein structure prediction Deep learning models (e.g., AlphaFold)
Metagenomics Data integration, classification, dimensionality reduction

Common tools include Python, R, Bioconductor, scikit-learn, Pandas, Seurat, and TensorFlow—often working together in reproducible workflows.

It's Not Just About Coding
A common misconception is that bioinformatics is just programming or scripting. But being a data scientist in bioinformatics also means:

Understanding experimental design

Asking biologically meaningful questions

Choosing the right statistical or machine learning models

Communicating findings effectively (e.g., plots, dashboards, papers)

In other words, data science in bioinformatics is where biology, statistics, and computer science converge.

Why It Matters
The real power of data science in bioinformatics is its ability to scale discovery.

Instead of studying one gene, we can study thousands.

Instead of analyzing one species, we can explore entire ecosystems.

Instead of waiting months for lab results, we can generate hypotheses in days.

From personalized medicine and cancer diagnostics to agricultural genomics and pandemic surveillance, data science is at the heart of the bioinformatics revolution.

Final Thoughts
If you’re a biologist who’s curious about code, or a data enthusiast fascinated by life sciences, bioinformatics is your playground—and data science is your toolkit.

In bioinformatics, data science isn’t just useful. It’s essential.

BlobToolKit is comprised of four components:

1. BlobToolKit Viewer allows browser-based interactive visualisation and filtering of preliminary or published genomic datasets even for highly fragmented assemblies.
2. BlobTools2 is a command-line program to convert assemblies and analysis results into datasets that can be further processed using BlobTools2 and/or visualised in the Viewer.
3. The BlobToolKit Specification features a formal schema and validator for the JSON-based BlobDir format used by BlobTools2 and the Viewer.
4. The BlobToolKit Pipeline is a configurable Snakemake pipeline that automates all steps from retrieving public datasets through running analyses and generating a BlobDir dataset with BlobTools2, ready for visualisation in the Viewer.

Paper https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/844852v1.full.pdf

Address of the bookmark: https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/

Links @ http://raivokolde.github.io/GOsummaries/

Lab @ http://biit.cs.ut.ee/about/main

More http://www.extension.org/pages/68354/upcoming-webinar:-fast-semi-parallel-linear-and-logistic-regression-for-genome-wide-association-studi#.UjCL9azyPqV

Register @ https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/237810425

Biostrings

The Biostrings package from Bioconductor provides an advanced environment for efficient sequence management and analysis in R. It contains many speed and memory effective string containers, string matching algorithms, and other utilities, for fast manipulation of large sets of biological sequences. The objects and functions provided by Biostrings form the basis for many other sequence analysis packages. Documentation

The manual translation of many, frequently rather complex SPSS scripts often presents itself as a tedious and error-prone task, and represents a rather large obstacle for many analysts and companies to migrate to a modern, open source data management and analysis tool like R. With translate2R this hurdle will be diminished substantially.

Find at https://service.eoda.de/translater/?lang=en

R-language: http://www.r-project.org

BioConductor: http://www.bioconductor.org

Advantages of R

• Free!
• Powerful, many libraries have been created to perform application specific tasks. e.g. analysis of microarray experiments and Next-Gen sequencing (bioconductor: including Bioseq group).
• Presentation quality graphics
  • Save as a png, pdf or svg
• History
  • What you do can be saved for the next time you use R.
  • Ability to turn it into an automated script to perform again and again on different data

Disadvantages

• Lack of a comprehensive graphical user interface, but two do exist: However some do exist: R commander: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/ and Limma-gui (microarrays) : http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/limmaGUI/

Preparation

• (Optional) Download and save the tutorial data set from
  • http://bioinformatics.knowledgeblog.org/wp-content/uploads/bioinf/kerr/data.tsv
  • Start R (type R on a Linux or Mac terminal, or find the starting link from PC)

Getting More Help

• Project Home page
  • http://www.r-project.org/
  • Check out the ‘introduction to R’, which is a much more in depth guide .
  • Also R has a built-in help system (see later)

Working directory

This is the directory used to store your data and results. It is useful if it is also the directory where your input data is stored.

• Mac/Linux: this is the directory where you typed in R
• PC: Change using the change working directory option

Reference@http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/one-page-r-a-survival-guide-to-data-science-with-r

• Templates for the Data Scientist
  1. A Template for Preparing Data: *OnePageR - *R
  2. A Template for Building Models: *OnePageR - *R
• Getting Started as a Data Scientist
  1. Getting Started with R and Rattle: *Lecture - *Laboratory
  2. Introducing and Interacting with R: *Lecture - *Laboratory
  3. BasicR - OnePage(R) - Writing R scripts
• Dealing With Data
  1. Read Data into R: *OnePageR - *R
  2. Explore and Summarise Data: *OnePageR - *R
  3. Transform Data: *OnePageR - *R
  4. Dealing with Dates and Time: (PDF, R) Dates and Time
  5. Visualising Data with GGPlot2: *OnePageR - *R
  6. Visualising Data with Maps *OnePageR - *R
  7. Spatial (R) Spatial Analysis
  8. Handling Big Data *OnePageR - *R
• Descriptive Analytics
  1. Cluster Analysis: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R
  2. Association Analysis: *Lecture
• Predictive Analytics
  1. Decision Trees: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R - *Rattle
  2. Ensembles of Decision Trees: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R
  3. SVM (R)
  4. KernLab (R)
  5. NeuralNetworks (R)
  6. NNet (R)
• Model Delivery
  1. Evaluating Models: *OnePageR - *R
  2. Evaluation (R)
  3. Scoring (R)
  4. PMML (R) Exporting Models for Deployment
• Advanced Topics
  1. Text Mining: *OnePageR - *R
• Advanced R Topics
  1. Plots (PDF, R) Miscellaneous Plots
  2. Functions (PDF, R) Writing Functions in R
  3. Parallel (PDF, R) Parallel Execution
  4. Packaging (R) Pulling it Together into a Package
  5. Doing R with Style: *OnePageR - *R
  6. Literate Data Mining with KnitR: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *