2 min to read

PYTHON FOR BIOINFORMATICS

Exploring the Intersection of Biology and Programming with Python.

This is the very beginning of the brand new series Python for Bioinformatics. I also studied biology during my high school. I know the difficulties and the problems that biologists have to face whenever they try to learn a how to code.

So if you are a biologist and you want to learn a new programming language you are at the right place. In this video we are going to learn a new programming language. Now, this is a billion dollar question which programming language we should learn. It’s in human nature that we like to go for the stuff which is easy to use and well known and about which everybody likes to talk.

So let’s try Google Trends to find out who’s hot these days in programming languages.

So from the Google Trends, graph we can see that python is the most hot programming language these days. Also we can see that lately popularity of python is increasing exponentilally.

The next question that will arise in your mind is that what will be the prerequsited to learn Python Programming. You might be scared that since you are from the realm of biology you don’t have those programming geek genes. This is a valid question and though and I have a good news for you the good news is Python is one of the most easiest programming languages.

It’s just like writing something in English not only this I will also be explaining everything with the examples taken from biological sciences so by the end of this series you will be an expert in Python. You will also be able to implement the skills you have learned in your computational problems related to biological sciences.

All you need is a working machine and a mind set to achieve this goal. So what are you waiting for let’s install Python from this link.

After the instalation is complete open the python idle or open it in terminal by running the python command and then write the following code and hit Enter button.

print('Hello to the world of Bioinformatics!')

Let’s say you don’t have a computer in hand and all you have is a mobile phone so we have another solution for you you all you need is a Google Drive. In you google drive you can create a google colab file and then run your python code from the browser in your Android, iPhone or even tablet. Click this link to get more information about Google Colab.

Now you can write code on the go even on your mobile phone. It’s that easy we will formally start coding from the next post. That is all for now see you soon :)