It was coming up to a year ago that I last really thought about Biochemistry, the title of my undergraduate degree. Of the timescale I am certain, because despite College being closed for the undergraduate vacation, the library is packed. Colleagues who are where I was one year ago count down the days of revision remaining until their finals in agonising, procrastinating Facebook updates.
After my finals, I moved, by way of a computational final year project, towards Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems Biology. This year, a term of taught courses preceeded three lab rotations. The report describing the first of these was completed, bound and submitted two weeks ago.
For my next trick project, I have been dispatched to the Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection in the building next door. Needing someone with bioinformatics skills to tackle a particular problem, the group leader advertised for an MSc student who was to make this question their project.
Today, Easter weekend over, I venture into the (busy!) library to get stuck into the background reading. As I tackle, highlighter in hand, the half-dozen papers I located via PubMed this morning, I face a dizzying reminder of the essay I came across during my first foray into Systems Biology. It’s not just that, in the papers I consider, “Algorithm details” have reverted to “Materials and Methods”. Back in the territory of cleavage sites and cell walls and proteases, I just don’t feel certain which side of the Bioinformatics/Biology fence I belong.
