Saturday, November 06, 2004

My Work

I am posting after a long time. Its more because I had not much to write. Been pretty busy with my work and otherwise just lazing around. Not really been into anything 'cool' as such. Or atleast something someone will want to read about.
On a more serious note, I shall write a bit about my work. Now, I have shifted to Computational Biology. As people have started sequencing genes on a massive scale the question of effectively analyzing the data comes into the picture. I am currently working on 2 topics-
1) Phylogenetic Trees- Ways to construct the evolutionary tree of a bunch of sequences.
2) Microarray Data Analyses- There are now ways to analyze how the genes of an organism produce RNA and finally proteins under a wide number of conditions very efficeintly. Analysis of this data can help understand similarities between different types of genes.
I need to know some amount of molecular biology. I plan to take courses in the coming semesters. Once I understand the problem, it boils down to math, mostly statistical modeling and a mix of graph theory and algorithms.
The work is fun as the final result of whatever I do has potential to be relevant scientifically. I kind of never liked Computer Science, I just liked the math. This looks an ideal alternative for me, as I work in pure science without actually working in pure science. I havent been so excited about what I do, since my JEE days when I used to love my maths, physics and chemistry. Now, I am learning biology, something I dont know much about but which I find fascinating.

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