Announcing BioCoder by Mike Loukides.
From the post:
We’re pleased to announce BioCoder, a newsletter on the rapidly expanding field of biology. We’re focusing on DIY bio and synthetic biology, but we’re open to anything that’s interesting.
Why biology? Why now? Biology is currently going through a revolution as radical as the personal computer revolution. Up until the mid-70s, computing was dominated by large, extremely expensive machines that were installed in special rooms and operated by people wearing white lab coats. Programming was the domain of professionals. That changed radically with the advent of microprocessors, the homebrew computer club, and the first generation of personal computers. I put the beginning of the shift in 1975, when a friend of mine built a computer in his dorm room. But whenever it started, the phase transition was thorough and radical. We’ve built a new economy around computing: we’ve seen several startups become gigantic enterprises, and we’ve seen several giants collapse because they couldn’t compete with the more nimble startups.
Bioinformatics and amateur genome exploration is growing hobby area. Yes, hobby area.
For background, see: Playing with genes by David Smith.
Your bioinformatics skills, which you learned for cross-over use in other fields, could come in handy.
A couple of resources to get you started:
Seems like a ripe field for mining and organization.
There is no publication date set on Weaponized Viruses in a Nutshell.