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A proposed minimum skill set for university graduates to meet the informatics needs and challenges of the "-omics" era
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: The development of high throughput experimental technologies have given rise to the "-omics" era where terabyte-scale datasets for systems-level measurements of various cellular and molecular phenomena pose considerable challenges in data processing and extraction of biological meaning. Moreover, it has created an unmet need for the effective integration of these datasets to achieve insights into biological systems. While it has increased the demand for bioinformatics experts who can interface with biologists, it has also raised the requirement for biologists to possess a basic capability in bioinformatics and to communicate seamlessly with these experts. This may be achieved by embedding in their undergraduate and graduate life science education, basic training in bioinformatics geared towards acquiring a minimum skill set in computation and informatics. RESULTS: Based on previous attempts to define curricula suitable for addressing the bioinformatics capability gap, an initiative was taken during the Workshops on Education in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (WEBCB) in 2008 and 2009 to identify a minimum skill set for the training of future bioinformaticians and molecular biologists with informatics capabilities. The minimum skill set proposed is cross-disciplinary in nature, involving a combination of knowledge and proficiency from the fields of biology, computer science, mathematics and statistics, and can be tailored to the needs of the "-omics". CONCLUSION: The proposed bioinformatics minimum skill set serves as a guideline for biology curriculum design and development in universities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
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Institutions often try to address the concern of computational training by expanding formal coursework and academic programs.
“Institutions often try and address this concern by expanding formal coursework and academic programs (Dinsdale et al., 2015; Tan et al., 2009; Welch et al., 2014).”
From Student‐led workshops: Filling skills gaps in computational research for life scientists (2021) · cites this paper as Tan et al., 2009
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Metadata
- Authors
- Tan, T., Lim, S., Khan, A. M., & Ranganathan, S.
- Affiliations
- National University of Singapore (SG)
- Corresponding author
- Tan, Tin
- Ranganathan, Shoba
- Venue
- BMC Genomics
- Published
- 2009
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- Suppl 3
- Pages
- S36
- ISSN
- 1471-2164 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2788390
- OpenAlex
- W1979196954
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 11
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 8
- Type
- conference abstract
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- BMC Genomics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- National University of Singapore (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National University of Singapore
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Systems Education and Curriculum Development
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Keywords
- bioinformatics education, interdisciplinary training, molecular biologists, university graduates, data integration, high-throughput data
- MeSH terms
- Curriculum, Students, Universities, Computational Biology, Genomics
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