[papaf]

From your post I can't tell if you come from a biochemistry or a computational background.

If you have a biochemistry background: I'd recommend that you use your strengths, and maybe concentrate on something that will help in the wetlab. The biological background required for algorithmic problems such as the statistics of protein and dna sequences is a well trodden path for people who know computer science. However, we know nothing about the wetlab and most of the software I see there is ugly, closed and expensive.

If you have a computer background: One suggestion is to install R, Bioconductor (bioconductor.org), and start playing with microarray data in the form of CEL files (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/).

[quantize]

I have a strange background, more of a CS background then bio, so this is a great suggestion. Thanks!