I was an young student, venturing out in to the world for the first time. A red sock got mixed in with my white washing. Despite my best efforts, it is still slightly pink. The shade isn’t obvious, but it still has a My Little Pony aura about it. <\/p>\n
Now I’m 22 and probably no more worldly-wise. However, I do now have a blog, which means it is only polite that I introduce myself.<\/p>\n
I’m Katie Grape, working my way through a masters degree in Biochemistry. I live somewhere in the UK, but I am not going to tell you my exact grid coordinates lest you stalk me. I’ll save that vital information until we know each other a little better.<\/p>\n
I am doing biochemistry because I have a manic thirst to find out how everything works. This year I did a project involving X-ray crystallography of a halophilic hydroxyacid dehydrogenase protein. It was simultaneously the hardest I have ever worked, and the most fun I have ever had. I’ll write all about that some other time. My main areas of interest are: PROTEINS, structure of. Oh my goodness, proteins are my life. Kinetics and mathsy physicsy stuff. Various methods of “visualising” little tiny molecules. Photosynthesis. I hate bacteria as they don’t always do what I tell them to, pesky things. I don’t like genetics either, which is a shame because I’m quite good at it. <\/p>\n I have one year left of my masters. Hopefully after that I’ll be doing a PhD. I want to stay in academic research and share my wisdom with little students like I was\/am. If someone will give me a job to write humorous literature reviews, or in fact any type of amusing science writing, I will marry them. Twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was an young student, venturing out in to the world for the first time. A red sock got mixed in with my white washing. Despite my best efforts, it is still slightly pink. The shade isn’t obvious, but it still has a My Little Pony aura about it. Now I’m 22 and probably no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introducing-my-brain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ktgrape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI was enraged when they didn’t tell me until A level what DNA actually does<\/em>. How does it “code for life”? The minute I left school and went to college they told me that it codes for proteins. If only they had told me that simple answer before! Of course the answer is actually a bit more complicated than that, but it was enough to satisfy me for a while.
\nMy degree is answering all my questions quite satisfactorily, unfortunately it is provoking even more. This is a good thing though, it will keep me occupied for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n
\nMy current project is a 5,000 word literature review on the evolution of protein folds. Again, I will ramble about (read: complain that I didn’t get to write about AFM<\/a>) this later.<\/p>\n
\nI’ve also done some modules on immunology, viruses, autoimmune disease. I know everything there is to know about the history of influenza pandemics. I’m not thinking of going in to the health field, but I thought I should keep my options open before I get completely lost in the biophysics universe.<\/p>\n