Ming Tommy Tang

Because responsibility isn't about waiting until you're strong enough—it's about doing what you can, right now.

Kids don't need to be shielded from effort. They need to be invited into it.

The weight builds more than muscle. It builds character. #lifelesson

Watching my son struggle with that water bottle, I realized he's learning the same lesson.

Not because the task is easy, but because it needs doing. Because he's part of this family.

One in each hand. Twenty trips back and forth.

Was I tired? Absolutely.

Was I proud when we finished? Absolutely.

That's when I learned: contribution matters more than capability.

I stood there, surprised. That bottle is heavy. But he was moving it. He was doing it.

It took me back 35 years.

I was 4, helping my parents move coal briquettes—200 of them. No electric stove, no gas. A truck would dump them, and we'd haul them to our yard.

My 7-year-old son was already halfway up the stairs—sliding, pulling, dragging that heavy 5-gallon water bottle.

Two small arms straining. Determined little grunts. He got it to the top and wrestled it into place.

The 5-Gallon Lesson in Responsibility

"Tommy, get me another bottle. Quick, no water!"

I was deep in work. "Wait a second..."

Still working. My wife, more urgent now.

Finally, I finished and headed to the garage. But I stopped in my tracks.

A multi-omics molecular landscape of 30 tissues in aging female rhesus macaques Nature Methods - This Resource provides a multi-omic tissue atlas of aging in nonhuman primates.

A multi-omics molecular landscape of 30 tissues in aging female rhesus macaques www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Bash scripting quirks & safety tips
jvns.ca/blog/2017/0...

10/
Key takeaways:
Easy install

Strong docs

Active maintenance

Fits your workflow

Test on your data

9/
Your data matters more than benchmarks.
What works on brain cells might fail on blood cells.
Always test on your data.

8/
Controversial take:
Nature Methods ≠ usability.
I’ve seen “high-impact” tools die after publication with zero updates.

7/
Pro tip: Tools from established labs are safer bets.
They’re maintained for years, not months.

6/
Step 3: Workflow integration.
Does it work with Seurat or Scanpy?
Does it use standard formats?
Will it break your pipeline?

5/
True story: Found a “revolutionary” scRNA-seq method.
Brilliant paper. Sparse docs. Maintainer gone.
We had to abandon it.

4/
Step 2: Documentation check.
Good signs:
• Clear tutorials
• Active GitHub issues
• Regular updates
Red flag: last commit 3+ years ago.

3/
Step 1: Can I install it?
Perfect benchmarks mean nothing if the install fails.
Test in a clean environment before you commit.

2/
New tools drop daily.
How do you pick one?
Here’s my real-world selection process—using single-cell RNA-seq as the example.

1/ Why I sometimes ignore Nature Methods papers when picking bioinformatics tools.
A practical guide to choosing tools that actually work.

Just stay in your lane, keep moving, and trust your route.

Your winter is preparing you for your spring. #lifelesson

If you're toiling right now—in slow traffic, working long hours, building skills, paying dues—you're not behind.

You're progressing. Every mile forward counts.
The harvest comes. The destination gets closer.

Don't compare your winter with someone else's autumn.

Don't measure your building phase against someone else's harvest season.

The real question isn't "Why are they moving faster?"

It's "Am I moving toward MY destination?"

Progress isn't about speed. It's about direction.

We're in different seasons.

This moment reminded me of something crucial in our careers: we're all on different highways.

Some colleagues seem to race ahead while we inch forward. But they're heading toward different destinations—different goals, different life stages, different definitions of success.

I glanced at the opposite lane—empty, fast-moving, cars speeding toward their destinations.

For a moment, I envied their speed.

Then it hit me: they're going somewhere completely different.

Their "fast" means nothing to my journey. Their road isn't mine.

5 PM commute.

Already dark.

GPS says one hour home through crawling traffic.

Study 50K cancer transcriptomes through deep learning. data: figshare.com/articles/da...
paper www.biorxiv.org/content/10....

Chatomics! — The Bioinformatics Newsletter Why Subscribe?✅ Curated by Tommy Tang, a Director of Bioinformatics with 100K+ followers across LinkedIn, X, and YouTube✅ No fluff—just deep insights and working code examples✅ Trusted by grad students, postdocs, and biotech professionals✅ 100% free

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Bioinformaticians are impatient👇
Conda is notorious slow...
then I found mamba github.com/mamba-org/m...,
then I found
pixi prefix.dev/blog/pixi_a... : Blazing fast cross-platform package management for teams.

By the creators of the mamba package manager. #bioinformatics

Chatomics! — The Bioinformatics Newsletter Why Subscribe?✅ Curated by Tommy Tang, a Director of Bioinformatics with 100K+ followers across LinkedIn, X, and YouTube✅ No fluff—just deep insights and working code examples✅ Trusted by grad students, postdocs, and biotech professionals✅ 100% free

I hope you've found this post helpful.

Follow me for more.

Subscribe to my FREE newsletter chatomics to learn bioinformatics divingintogeneticsandgenomics.ck.page/profile

14/
Action item:
Next time you analyze a dataset, pretend you’re a detective
Ask: What looks off? What doesn't add up?
The truth is in the noise.