Would a paper on neuroscience make an impact for the Computer Science PhD application? I'm pursuing a master's degree in Computer Science, and have no background in computational biology and bioinformatics. Although the paper I'm talking about does not propose any original, interesting computational model/method, it successfully combines two proposed approach -in a very trivial way-. I will be the co-first author of that paper, which is very likely to get published in a very impactful journal (IF&gt;5k), since I dealt with all analytical and computational donkey work all by myself.
This paper is quite biology-oriented. I'm wondering about the impact of this paper if I apply for computational biology and bioinformatics PhD programs in US. It is obvious that my coursework does not focus on computational biology and/or bioinformatics.
Such a paper can't hurt and might help. CS is a pretty wide field with both theoretical and applied aspects. Your paper seems to describe applications. That would be more of a boost in some programs than in others.
But in the US, doctoral admissions is based on a wide variety of things, including letters of recommendation. Your co-author(s) may be able to help you there.
In any case, the paper is (about) done, and can't be a negative, so certainly include it in the CV and if applied CS is your goal, you might have something to add to your Statement of Purpose. Expect a lot of competition for slots in those schools, of course. You increase your chances if you widen the search a bit.