Be very very good at differential equations. Systems/synthetic biology primarily rely on dynamics to model behavior and side effects. AlphaFold is actually pretty different from the biomodel type of modeling.

This is a good intro to (non deep learning based) computational/synthetic biology. ML in biology is somewhat orthogonal but it is rapidly growing.

http://be150.caltech.edu/2020/content/index.html

Traditional bioinformatics is mostly text mining and string processing. Modern bioinformatics is heavily dominated by ML.