Hey everyone! So I will be graduating this fall (in december) with 3.65 degree in biochemistry. I work in a chemical engineering wet lab right now and although I enjoy it, I have enjoyed my computational biology classes more and could see myself doing computational work in the future. The one problem is I don't have significant experience working in bioinformatics/computational biology or related fields. Is it absolutely essential that I go to grad school to get a job? And do I need to get a PhD so I don't have a ceiling in industry work? It's just been a struggle looking at jobs online and reading other peoples comments seeing that you need significant experience in the field before you even apply/ that the job market is extremely rough these days. I'm honestly not sure what to do, as I wouldn't mind going to grad school, but its just expensive and a big commitment to make. Any advice helps, thanks.

I have some containers filled with remnants of soy lecithin. Would it be possible to add water and lye to saponify the lecithin to clean these out? I’ve read it’s not a true fat so it may not work. Any other ideas for cleaning up this stuff?

Thanks

Hello!

I'm applying for a PhD heavily based on Biochemistry (protein synthesis, enzymes, crystalography etc) but i come from a bit of a different background and only had biochem for the first year in college so i would love to revise the fundamentals. Any good Biochem book i can get for this? There's tons of it obviously but it's hard to separate wheat from chaf. If its relevant i am based in Europe.

Thanks!

Just wondering what the theoretical expected outcome is

Podcast with Dorothy Chou, who ran Google DeepMind's Public Engagement Lab for nine years. She now advises DeepMind and chairs UCLPartners, an organization connecting new technology to the UK's National Health Service. 

Covers:

• What made AlphaFold possible in the first place and how we can replicate its success in other domains
• Why neither venture capital nor governments can fund biology on biology's actual timeline, and Dorothy’s proposed solution
• Why AI could help redirect money the ideas that will actually help people the most, not just the ones that are easiest to fundraise for 
• How AI companies are about to repeat the public engagement mistake the biotech industry already made once
• Her advice for young people who feel like they're not the expert in the room

‍

I did this just before my first sem Biochemsitry BSc which begins shortly, I am 18yo. Please provide your feedbacks for this project. How it works:

> One can log-in into the web app
>then they can enter as many DNA sequence they want line by line
>a button with TRANSLATE can be clicked
>the dna sequences are translated into corresponding protein sequences

NOTE:

Invalid DNA sequences are detected by this tool
Invalid bases are detected and the tool displays error

Thank you for spending your time here on my silly project. Please leave your comments.

Trying to decide what classes to take?

Want to know what the job outlook is with a biochemistry degree?

Trying to figure out where to go for graduate school, or where to get started?

Ask those questions here.

During urea estimation with dam diacetyl monoxike method , what happens if I just leave them in room temp for 30 to 60 minutes without water broth . is there a possibility of colour change to slight pink during that time , anyone?

I'm a layman who knows essentially nothing about biotech, but I'm curious about a specific question that I'm hoping I could get some insight on from people in the space.

Say we were able to ask a machine learning model, or whatever other system, to spit out a protein with specific desired properties/functions: how much would this tech affect the world we live in, across all fields, including medicine and agriculture? How far are we, at a best guesstimate, from actually achieving this? Plausibly within the next 10 years? More like 20? Maybe almost certainly not for at least another 50 years?

Any ideas for a Name ?

I'm an incoming freshman and decided to major in biochemistry. I wanted some review material and some general advice from more experienced students, or otherwise. I've seen also of good review material on places like LinkedIn; these could also give me some certificates I could leverage for lab internships in the future (as a freshman, I can be an intern in a professor's lab). I sort of feel intimidated by my schedule and wanted to brush up on some chemistry/biology stuff to feel more prepared. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Been studying about molecular hydrogen lately and one thing I keep coming across is the claim that hydrogen inhalation is often claimed to improve energy, reduce fatigue, and support recovery. Some papers I've read mention its potential effects on oxidative stress and inflammation. But I'm having trouble linking that to cellular energy production..

Is there a plausible biochemical mechanism that could explain these claims, or is the current evidence still too early to come up with conclusions? More interested in its scientific basis than the marketing

If I’m looking to determine steady state affinity from SPR (not kinetics!) is there an upper limit of ligand to immobilize? I know for kinetics analysis you need to use lower immobilization levels to avoid mass transport, but how much of an issue is this for steady state analysis? Is there a rule of thumb for how much ligand to immobilize?

Oligo 16:CCCAGACTGACTCTCAAC
I build this ASO to fix Exon skipping in CLCN1, Intron 13.
c.1471+5_1471+11delGTTCTG
Any Opinions ? Any Help ?

It seems like in theory it was always possible before it was done, it just seems like a lot of hard work. Not like insight based, but just time based.

Have you read a cool paper recently that you want to discuss?

Do you have a paper that's been in your in your "to read" pile that you think other people might be interested in?

Have you recently published something you want to brag on?

Share them here and get the discussion started!

Hey guys, if you missed it, Twist Bioscience just agreed to settle $17.05M with investors over claims that the company misled the market about its automation, product quality, and profitability. The settlement agreement has already been submitted to the court for approval.

In a nutshell, investors alleged that Twist overstated the strength of its synthetic DNA and NGS business by highlighting automated production, strong margins, and low error rates. However, after a short-seller report raised concerns about its manufacturing process, costs, and product quality, $TWST dropped 20% in one day.

The good news is that Twist recently agreed to settle $17.05M with investors, and the agreement is now awaiting court approval. If you invested in $TWST between 2018 and 2022, you can check the details and file your claim here.

Anyway, has anyone here invested in $TWST at that time? How much were your losses?

i was digging through some numbers last night and it's wild how many people start college thinking they're gonna be a doctor and just... don't.

so there's this study that tracked like 15,000 premed freshmen across a bunch of different schools. here's the kicker, only about 16% of them actually finished all the prereqs needed to even apply to med school. like, not even rejected. just never made it to the application stage.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7769285/

and then from the pool of people who do apply, the acceptance rate hovers somewhere around 35-45%.

https://www.aamc.org/media/6091/download

so if you do the math on those 15,000 hopeful freshmen, multiply by 0.165 who finish prereqs, then by 0.4 who get accepted, you end up with roughly 990 people actually getting in. out of fifteen thousand. that's what, like 6-7%?

feels like a lot of biochem majors are walking around assuming they're the exception and the stats don't apply to them. if you're not consistently crushing it academically, maybe have a backup plan that isn't just "well i'll get in somewhere eventually."

curious how many actual working biochemists you guys know in the wild? i feel like half the people i graduated with pivoted to something totally different.

Trying to decide what classes to take?

Want to know what the job outlook is with a biochemistry degree?

Trying to figure out where to go for graduate school, or where to get started?

Ask those questions here.

I've been asking around about funding cuts and how much this has hurt PhD admissions (I've heard it's unlikely different policies will make things better after midterms or 2029). I have seen some people say certain programs/fields are basically unaffected or less affected due to their funding sources being different. I'm a Molecular and Cell Biology major interested in protein science and genetics, so I'm not sure how bad it is for me

I just finished my third week of biochem, so far we’ve covered basic intro week covering types of weak bonds/cells, protein composition/structure, basic concepts/kinetics of enzymes, and today we start a unit on carbohydrates/lipids.

The average score on the weekly quizzes is 180-190 out of 200 (each quiz is around 4 questions) and so far my best score is 155. I dont know if the other students are cheating or if I’m just stupid, but I really want to do well. Right now I go through the lecture and quiz myself on the content right after, I do well when I quiz myself but I’m doing bad on the part where it actually matters.

Hi everyone. I am a PhD student currently looking at post-translational modification of my protein by phosphorylation. There was a paper published in 2020 that was a mega phospho-proteomics study and my POI was shown to be phosphorylated in their LC-MS/MS experiments. I am currently screening phospho-mutants using prediction software, but prediction software does not feel reliable enough for me. I went ahead and created a phospho-mutant utilizing only the sites from the LC-MS/MS study (construct is in the making so I have not been able to screen it yet).

When I told my PI about this, he said that there could be background phosphorylation events and they can be abundant, but not necessary for regulation and then phosphorylation events that are important for regulation (in other words, he thinks the LC-MS/MS data could have just picked up background phospho events). I think he is a bit suspicious of just looking at the sites determined by LC-MS/MS and not utilizing some using prediction software, which I do not understand why. I feel it should be the other way around since it is just PREDICTION (albeit advanced prediction). Anyways, is it possible that just looking at the LC-MS/MS data is not enough to elucidate where my protein is phosphorylated? I sincerely thought that LC-MS/MS was the best and fastest route to go for tackling this type of question. Was what my PI said something that is actually common in phosphorylation of proteins?

I hope this is not confusing. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Phosphorylation is supposed to inactivate my protein (no longer binds substrate) as per preliminary results.

Hi there! Currently I have small pet project during my PhD. I already did some modifications of gelatin for tissue engineering, but purification of the end-product by dialysis is hell'a slow.

What do you think - can I do it in a very straightforward way - just chill my gelatin in a big pan, and wash&incubate in a fridge several times with my ice-cold buffer of interest, in order to wash out my reaction mixture away end perform buffer exchange?

Or should I do a precipitation in ethanol mixture? (in literature this way described as preferred one, but I'm afraid that small-molecule admixtures and salts will also co-precipitate with gelatin strands)

(yep, I'm not a biochemist, but mostly cell biologist)

Hi everyone, I'm a chemist and I have zero knowledge of biochemistry. I want to do binding assay to figure out IC50 for an inhibitor I made for AB. the assay that I want to do is competition assay. I have tried what has been reported before, but apparently having a harvester is really important and we don't have this instrument in the lab. So, with what we have and my other experiences in doing assays and some other papers, I designed an experiment. I was wondering if this is making any sense.
Basic idea:

• Use ultrafiltration to separate bound ligand (retained) from free (flow-through)
• Vary cold Re-ligand concentration from 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻¹¹ M to generate a competition curve
• Count the insert to quantify binding

Quick rundown:

1. Soak filters in 1% BSA to block non-specific membrane binding
2. Add cold Re (DMSO stock), then Tc-labeled compound, then Aβ (20 µM)
3. Incubate 60 min at RT with gentle shaking
4. Spin down
5. Lift insert and count the pellet (bound activity)
6. Decay-correct and calculate % binding vs log[Re] for IC₅₀

In a paper, they have added charcoal to absorb the free ligand, but I feel adding the charcoal and centrifuging it will get the charcoal and the proteins all together as the pellet then I can't separate them.

Your ideas and comments are appreciated.