Sample Interview Questions: Bioinformatics

The following sample interview questions and answers are for the types of questions you should expect during an interview for a bioinformatics analyst/programmer position.

1. Tell me about the different kinds of DNA sequences.There are three kinds of DNA sequences. Genomic DNA comes from the genome and includes both genes and extragenic material. cDNA is reverse transcribed from mRNA and corresponds only to the expressed parts of the genome. Recombinant DNA is man-made and is composed of artificial DNA.

2. If you had 1,500 base pair pieces of random DNA and you wanted to know how many of them had homology to known genes, what would you do to determine that? I would use a BLASTX search against a known protein database - such MCBI's NR database. I would then sort them to determine how many were unique.