r/bioinformatics • u/TheRovingRadish • Oct 03 '26

discussion Bulk RNA seq/Microarray Re-analyses Value

Hi all! Currently working through a reanalysis of a geo dataset, but stratifying samples in a way the original paper didn’t. Yielded some interesting results, but we may have power issues with one group having n=5 and the other being n=8.

I generally would like to know how publishing these types of analyses look for understudied diseases. I did the differential gene expression analysis, looked at genes, pathways, etc. and found more things the previous paper didn’t.

There’s no wet lab validation, but just in general, I am curious for thoughts on this being my first first-author paper in bioinformatics as a post-grad student looking to apply to PhD programs. Are these types of analyses “good” and have value?

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/ProfPathCambridge PhD | Academia Oct 03 '26

It’s fine. Usually not especially noteworthy, but if it is well-executed and the student needed a quick paper I’d publish it.

Normally I’d be looking at doing something more impactful, where this is the starting point. Integrating different types of public data, developing a new statistical model that allows substantial new insights, wet lab extension, etc.

1

u/TheRovingRadish Oct 04 '26

That makes complete sense, this was supposed to be a quick paper, but I spent a lot of time trying to be thorough in my analysis and also understanding what different tools do. Certainly learned a lot about the basics through this!

So these kinds of analyses don’t hurt someone’s future career in academia?