Entering the Realm of Bioinformatics

Early in the middle school, just in my first biology lesson, I was totally captured by this fantastic science---Biology. Compared to other sciences, in my opinion, biology is more practical. With the knowledge in other fields—physics, chemistry, mathematics, even social sciences, biology helps us to know better about ourselves. Being human beings, to understand ourselves can be the most important thing. Indeed, LIFE is the most wonderful and complex thing in the world, it worth a profound study.

Due to my great interests in biology, the two biology teachers in my middle school helped me a lot and both suggested me to take biology as my major in the college. Considering that studying biology with physics theory would be more interesting, I chose Biophysics as my major in Nankai University. In those four years I took many basic courses, not only in biology but also in physics. I got a much deeper understanding of biology in my college. However, I didn't feel my knowledge was sufficient. An advanced study was badly required.

In the year of 2004, I first stepped into the field of bioinformatics.That's in Professor Zhang's Bio-computation and Neuroinformatics Laboratory in Nankai University. There I began to do something about Neuroinformatics and Molecule Informatics. We deal with signals obtained from rats' nerve system. By comparing EEG, RSNA ( Renal sympathetic nerve signals) among disease group and normal group, we aim to find some different features. The analysis methods mainly include non-linear analysis and time-frequency analysis. Besides, we also do something about Molecule informatics, like protein sequence and structure analysis, DNA sequence analysis, and so on. I should say, I learned a lot in that team.

Now I am working in Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. I still do some analysis job here, like collecting molecule data from the internet, analyzing the sequences, constituting databases. I hope that I can learn something more advancing and do some profound research with great happiness.