Me

Hi, I’m Rob. I’m a technical writer in the process of working the Project Rosalind set of bioinformatics problems. For each problem in Project Rosalind, I’ll post about the key points on my path to a solution as well as the bioinformatics and Python concepts I learn along the way.

Rosalind Franklin

Project Rosalind is named after Rosalind Franklin who, despite only living to the age of 37, lived an absolutely fascinating life, and was instrumental in our understanding of the molecular structures of DNA.

Ground rules

AI Use: I’m not going to use any AI tools for this project because I’m doing this to learn and write about what I learn.
Posting Code: I’m sharing my code repository here, so that you can see my solutions in detail.

Getting started

I solved 37 of these problems back in 2018. I’ll be re-working those and writing blog posts about them.

Then, I’ll move on to solving new problems and writing about them. You can see my current progress toward solving all the problems.

How Project Rosalind works

The way Project Rosalind works is that I click a big Download Dataset button, and the website deposits a file in my downloads folder. For example, the first problem’s abbreviation is “dna”, so the download file will be called “rosalind_dna.txt”

Then, I have 5 minutes to run my code and upload my answer.

Since time is limited, and I don’t want to waste time looking for files or moving information around with copy and paste, I’ll start my program by opening the specific file in the downloads folder. For me, that’s:

file_path = "/Users/robertbryan/Downloads/rosalind_dna.txt"

When I run my code, I save the results in a file like so:

solution_path = "../solution-outputs/rosalind_dna.txt"

Then, I can upload my solution file to Project Rosalind, click submit and see if my response is correct.

Restating the problem

I start each challenge by framing the problem in my own words. This helps clarify what I think is being asked, and begins the process of breaking the problem down into solvable pieces).

Who is this for?

You may find this content interesting if you are:

a hiring manager or HR professional looking to recruit a technical writer
a technical writer who is curious about what another writer does
someone else working Project Rosalind
anyone interested in the process of problem-solving
a bioinformatics student looking into technical writing as a career