Biochemist Penny Beuning's interest in science began at a very young age.
"I knew probably even in elementary school... that I really liked math
and science, and that was solidified in high school," she says. "I had great
science teachers and it got me really excited about science. There were lots
of opportunities to do extra things and projects and labs, so I always liked
it."
Beuning also had a friend whose mom was a biologist. This also helped move
her toward a science career. When she went to college she decided to major
in chemistry.
"Like a lot of people I didn't know what the range of options was," says
Beuning. "And I was pretty, I would say, naive. I just thought, 'I like this,
I'm just going to keep doing what I like, and presumably something will work
out.'"
In college Beuning did chemistry research in a lab for a couple of years.
She really got excited about the project. She also worked part time at a company,
doing quality control and some research related to product testing.
"My research project wasn't very biochemical, it was more chemistry, but
then it got me thinking about proteins and more biological questions," says
Beuning. "So I went to grad school in a chemistry department, but had a biochemistry
project. That was when I thought, 'OK, this is what I want to do -- I want
to do biochemistry."
It was in grad school that Beuning decided to become a professor.
Biochemists are fortunate to have many career options, including those
in industry and schools.
"I like teaching, I like working with students, I like working with undergraduate
researchers, and so that was a big pull for me," says Beuning. "And I like
curiosity-driven research, so I like to work on things I just find interesting.
It's a lot easier to do that in academics."
Beuning estimates that she spends 60 to 70 percent of her time on research.
Her research focuses on how cells respond to stresses that harm the genetic
material within cells. These sources of stress are both environmental as well
as internal to the cell.
"I think curiosity about the natural world is a good characteristic --
you want to understand how something works, or how to make it better," says
Beuning. "That's a lot of what we do."
There's another quality biochemists should have: Perseverance.
"If you're doing research, in particular," says Beuning. "Because experiments
don't always work or they don't give you the result that you expect, and you
have to be willing to do it again or rethink your hypothesis."
Curiosity and perseverance aren't just helpful in the work world. They
also help you succeed at university. There are other skills that will help
you at university.
"I guess [key] skills would be communication skills, both written and oral,"
says Robert Bertolo. He is deputy head of a department of biochemistry.
"And I think that probably the most successful students are the ones who
can manage their time the best," Bertolo says.
"I think time management really separates the good marks from the bad
marks. It's not intelligence, at that level." Bertolo says many biochemistry
students are hoping to become medical researchers or physicians.
"And I would say across the country that's pretty common, mostly because
biochemistry is housed in a lot of medical schools now," says Bertolo.
"Not everybody gets into research or medicine, so I'd say the most common
[alternative] fields would be pharmaceutical sales and research [and] the
food industry," Bertolo adds. . Bertolo himself is a nutrition researcher.
When choosing a biochemistry program, Bertolo says it depends what you're
looking for.
"Some people would chase the reputation side of things, and things get
a little bit more cutthroat when you're going into the bigger schools with
the bigger reputations," says Bertolo. "But there's a lot people who emphasize
smaller class sizes also. With smaller class sizes, you get a closer relationship
with the researchers, and getting opportunities to work in labs is more likely
at a smaller school."
Biochemist Jan Rainey's interest in biochemistry began in high school.
"Prior to about Grade 12 or so I didn't really even know that this discipline
by itself existed," says Rainey. "So then I had a teacher in Grade 12 who
actually had a master's in biochemistry and was quite excited about it and
gave us a lot of flavor for that side of things.
"Prior to that I thought chemistry itself, sort of the more pure chemistry
side of things, was great, and I didn't even know about this field called
biochemistry which combined my interest in how organisms work with my interest
in atoms and molecules."
Rainey's research focuses on structural biology and the characteristics
of proteins in cells.
"If you look at the human genome, for example, the 30 percent of the proteins
that you find encoded in the human genome are found on the surface of the
cell, the so-called 'membrane proteins,'" says Rainey. "But if you look at
our actual knowledge of protein structure at the atomic level, maybe one percent
of the proteins that we know about are this class of membrane proteins.
"So despite the fact that it's a huge proportion of proteins in our body
we still are barely scratching the surface of understanding what those proteins
look like and therefore how they work at the molecular, atomic level," Rainey
adds. "This is a really hot area at the moment because using traditional methods
these proteins have been quite difficult to study, which is why we don't know
a lot about them. So a lot of labs are now developing new methods, new ways
of dealing with these tricky proteins and understanding what the surface
of the cell really looks like."
Dealing with things that are so tiny, like cell proteins, means that biochemists
benefit from having a good imagination.
"You're not going to be able to see it with the naked eye, so you have
to be able to envision a complex system and sort of put the bits and pieces
that you know together and really combine them in new and imaginative ways
to understand what's going on," says Rainey.
It's imagination that leads to discovery. And the desire for discovery
is what drives many biochemists to do such challenging work.
"I think you've got to have a desire to discover new things," says Rainey.
"That to me is the amazing thing about biochemistry, or about any of the sciences
-- is that what we're doing is really brand new. We wouldn't be doing what
we're doing if somebody had done it before us, so we're always charting new
ground and finding out new things about nature."