I majored in Biotechnology for my undergraduate degree. I chose Biotechnology as my major because I wanted to continue to major in discipline of science, meanwhile I wanted to keep away from the discipline like advanced mathematics, physics, chemistry, computing which I thought was difficult to learn. However, when I began my undergraduate program, I began to realize I was wrong. Because all of the disciplines were closely interrelated and intertwined with each other. As a biological student, all of these courses I wanted to get rid of were my fundamental courses before entering into the biological courses. In addition, I found that the interdisciplinary program is much more useful and powerful than single discipline. This made me become more open to interdisciplinary field and dare to embrace the challenge.
In my fourth year of undergraduate program, I went to Jiangsu Agricultural Sciences Academy for my internship. My research project was about C4-PEPC gene transgenetic rice, through transgenosis of C4-PEPC gene into rice, the photosynthesis efficiency and anti-drought ability of rice would be largely enhanced, which leads to the increase production and financial benefit. I learned to used real-time PCR, familiarized many kinds of Kits to operate the experiment and learned to use statistical method to analyze complex data. All of these practical technology benefits me a lot. Besides, I increasingly realized that the greatness and importance of my major because biological technology development can definitely contribute to social benefit.
I choose the discipline Bioinformatics for my graduate degree. The biological knowledge I accumulated in my undergraduate program can make me feel good about this field. In addition, as we have entered into an information era, the specialists majoring in Informatics or data analysis have become badly needed in current society. Thus it is a sensible choice for me to learn Bioinformatics.
In this field, I’m especially interested in cancer research. Cancer is an unsolved health problem with extremely low survival rate. Despite the strong link between mortality and malignancy, the precise mechanisms behind cancer dissemination and metastasis are still unclear. Three years ago, my grandfather died from lung cancer. He was diagnosed as advanced disease and he had struggled against cancer for half year. The whole family insisted to receive imported drug treatment regardless the new-launched drug was still during probation and extremely expensive. Unfortunately, the drug not only didn’t treat his lung cancer, but also negatively influenced his hepatic function. I was mournful when I could do nothing but to see my grandfather became increasing feeble. We refused the chemotherapy or radiotherapy which is widely known as harmful, however, as his family, although we knew the side-effect of drug therapy, we can’t persuade ourselves to keep him sick without any treatment.
Including my grandfather, a large quantity of patient struggling between life and death desperately need better treatment and efficient therapy. I wish to become an insider in this field to contribute to the great career of cancer research. As a students of Bioinformatics, I can learn to collect, store, analyze complex data, which can make critical contributions to disease detection, drug design as well as studying the mechanism of cancer dissemination and metastasis. In addition, there are several prominent professors doing cancer research, from whom I can acquire many useful guidance and instruction. For my future plan, When I graduate, I will continue to study PHD program during which I can join in a research project and learn some practical experimental skill. For my job, I can enter into biological company, research center to do research project.