I have been thoroughly enjoying our latest project at IntelliFactory. Me and Loïc Denuzière, the creator of FPish, are working together for the U Nebraska Medical Center on genetic visualization with HTML5/WebSharper/F#. The organism of interest is Staphylococcus aureus. We have built an interactive chart showing its genome coding sequences and a few thousand transposon insertions performed in the UNMC labs.
You are welcome to play with the latest prototype.
It has been fun to do some graphics and modular arithmetic. We used Raphael to draw SVG, this has worked quite well for us, especially after we "fixed" the Raphael API a little bit for easier use from F# in the latest WebSharper binding. I also am just starting to realize how much I missed in highschool biology.
F# may have a great future in bioinformatics. Type providers easily consuming various data sources, .NET providing decent performance for numerical algorithms, and WebSharper or Silverlight giving a browser-accessible UI.. The only limit is your imagination.
In one of the discussions we had, Loïc made an interesting comment. He said that unlike working in the financial sector, applying F# to bioinformatics is not just interesting, but also useful. And though I have not been an Occupy protester, I cannot help but agree. Realizing that your work may help medical research is definitely a great motivator.
If you are tempted to work with us, please do apply: we are hiring. Interns are especially welcome.
