Skip to main content

Exome or Whole Genome Sequencing?

This is one of the most discussed topics especially in Clinical Genomics! Affordability, accuracy, feasibility and of course time consumption - based on these factor mostly, which sequencing technology is more suitable for clinics? Whole Exome Sequencing or Whole Genome Sequencing? (WGS or WES, WGS vs WES) So here's my 2 cents on this discussion! When it comes to DNA sequencing there has always been a raging debate over the choice of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) or Whole Exome Sequencing (WXS) for routine use. Whole genome sequencing (WGS), as the name suggests is the process of obtaining the entire genome. In most cases however, this is far from practical and only 95-97% of the genome is covered because it is technically difficult to sequence certain regions of the genome (high GC content, large repeat regions, centromeres, telomeres, etc.) with existing technology. “It’s very fair to say the human genome was never fully sequenced,”  - Craig Venter “The human genome ha...
Post a Comment

How do I get into Veterinary School?

What advice would you give to any aspiring candidate who is seeking to become a veterinarian?


As we have seen in the recent past, Boromir tends to be pessimistic about most of the things we could do and say. But do not let Boromir discourage you. Here are some tips for you to prepare yourself to start a career as a Vet.

Future Vet Website is an excellent place to start if you are looking for organised information. They advise you briefly about the necessary steps while you are in High School and as a College undergraduate. They also have lots of other interesting materials to read.

Otherwise here are my simple tips - 

 Firstly ask yourself whether you are an animal lover - there's no point in being scared of animals, hate animals or indifferent about animals if you want to be their guardian angel for the rest of your life!

Secondly be sure you want to be a vet for the right reason - to care, nurture, protect and save! and not for that Maserati you always wanted to own (Not that the Veterinary profession is high-paying, but it has the potential to skyrocket your professional profile if you put in the smart work).

Thirdly and mainly plan your path ahead - chose a few Veterinary practices around your locality, request the practice manager and the Vet to allow you to visit and observe them at work, do vountary work experience on weekends and evenings or may be get a receptionist job at one of those practices so you get the knowledge of the business and professional jargon. 

And finally lookout for the Vet Schools of interest, find out if they have any entrance exams/tests, find out what is the minimum GPA required to enroll for admission to the Vet degree programme (you can always go to the Vet school's website, search and email the Vet school/University admissions officer).

Hope this is helpful.

Best wishes and good luck on your journey.

 Venkatesh Chellappa (BVSc. & AH, MSc)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Exome or Whole Genome Sequencing?

This is one of the most discussed topics especially in Clinical Genomics! Affordability, accuracy, feasibility and of course time consumption - based on these factor mostly, which sequencing technology is more suitable for clinics? Whole Exome Sequencing or Whole Genome Sequencing? (WGS or WES, WGS vs WES) So here's my 2 cents on this discussion! When it comes to DNA sequencing there has always been a raging debate over the choice of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) or Whole Exome Sequencing (WXS) for routine use. Whole genome sequencing (WGS), as the name suggests is the process of obtaining the entire genome. In most cases however, this is far from practical and only 95-97% of the genome is covered because it is technically difficult to sequence certain regions of the genome (high GC content, large repeat regions, centromeres, telomeres, etc.) with existing technology. “It’s very fair to say the human genome was never fully sequenced,”  - Craig Venter “The human genome ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

How do Dogs get rid of hiccups so quickly while most humans seem to struggle?

My dog is laying here on the couch and I noticed she just contracted hiccups and within 3 hiccups was back to normal again. Its not the first time I noticed, just the first time I noticed while browsing Quora. Humans will go to the ends of the earth trying every homeopathic cure known or suggested and can struggle for a considerable length of time to rid themselves of them.  The answer is in our anatomy.. our epiglottis is perpendicular to the axis of the trachea and is almost vertical due to our upright pose while it is slightly tilted in case of dogs! Venkatesh Chellappa (BVSc. &AH, MSc.)
1 comment
Read more

Installing Sleuth for RNA-seq analysis

So, I tried installing Sleuth along with Kallisto for RNA-seq data analysis. Getting Kallisto to work was no big deal but Sleuth required a couple of dependencies even before installation. Following instructions on github and on other online tutorials which seemed pretty straightforward as in any R-Bioconductor based installation, I expected this to go smooth. Much to my surprise, it wasn't a cake walk! Sleuth requires us to install 'devtools' and 'rhdf5' from within biocLite in R (I think we could google a little about what these packages do). I had a fresh 64-bit BioLinux-8 installation which is basically a Linux Ubuntu 14.04 based OS, comes bundled with many preconfigured bioinformatics packages including a R version 3.2.0. Initially running biocLite('rhdf5') didn't throw any error and went all the way with just a couple of minor version warnings but biocLite('devtools') threw numerous errors and just wouldn't work. After a few...
Post a Comment
Read more