Post Graduate studies

Biochemistry is the branch of science that explores the chemical processes within the living organism. By using chemical knowledge and techniques, biochemists can understand and solve biological problems. Biochemistry covers a range of scientific disciplines, including genetics, microbiology, forensics, plant science and medicine.

It is common for biochemists to continue their higher education if they are intending to develop a career in the biosciences, something that I want to do eventually. Biochemists can specialize on several science fields and work in many places, therefore there are many post graduate courses that cover all of them.

I would like to take a postgraduate course related with biochemistry, genetics, microbiology or molecular biotechnology and If the conditions are given I would study abroad. 

A degree in biochemistry will definitely include laboratory sessions where I will be exposed to the fundamental and latest techniques, and tools used in biochemistry, something that really interests me.

Strong chemistry knowledge is highly beneficial, also a biochemistry degree in some institutions may include courses on microbiology, immunology, clinical biochemistry, management, applied statistics and computer skills.

My future job

I don't know exactly what job I would like to do, hopefully something related to my college career, of course, biochemistry. Nonetheless I have an idea about the study field I would like to work on. Genomic Medicine or Microbial and Environmental Genomics. Long time ago I read a scientist's biography, Craig Venter, a biochemistry, he is the owner of J.Craig Venter Institute. In the book he described a curious and smart way to work on Environmental Genomics, basically one of his assignment is to gather genomes and genes from microorganism in the ocean to be isolated in the lab and make synthetic bacterias with those genes. Those genes could be helpfull for example to motabolize carbon dioxide to organic fuel and reduce the concentration of this compound in the atmosphere. 

In things like that I would like to work, discovering new ways to contribute on the environmental fields or new ways to find cures on Genomic Medicine. 

To work on this things I have to study a major, for example a PhD in biochemistry to be capable and competent on the genomics discipline.

So that's it, basically the kind of job I would like to do in the future is one that allow me to travel a lot and it could be indoors or outdoors.

About music

I've always listened music, most of the artist that I used to listen was the one's that my brother and my mom showed me. Artists I still listen to,  Ska-p, Sui Generis, Phil Collins, Eduardo Peralta, Silvio Rodriguez, Los Prisioneros, Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam, Eduardo Gatti, Queen and many others.

I feel that I listen different kind of music during seasons for example, for a time I listened Cat Stevens almost every day and listened his whole discography, actually Cat stevens marked one special summer to me. I also have a heavy music taste along with my soft music taste. Artists like Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Angra, Black Sabbath, Judas priest and many others are part of my set of heavy music.

I play acoustic and electric guitar due to my brother influence, he is a musician and also plays the drums.

Not long ago I had a Radiohead and Atoms For Peace season, two bands that are related because of Thom Yorke, one of the artists I like the most. I've been listen to Cristobal Briceño lately and his band related with, Ases Falsos.

I'd like to remark about Cat Stevens. His music is like fresh air and got a message of peace inside his composition, its hard to have a favourite Cat stevens song because I like most of his discography. The remarkable albums I could do a mention of, are Matthew and Son, Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat, and Foreigner. 

Endorphins makes you happy

Most of us are aware of what happens to the body when we exercise. We build more muscle or more stamina. We fell how daily exercise activities become easier if we preactice regularly.
But how exercise activities could make you happy?
We commonly hear the line "endorphins are released" and we conform with that explanation without really knowing what it means. Here is what actually happens:
If you start exercising, your brain recognizes that as a moment of stress. The brain triggers the fight or flight responde to protect yourself from stress. you release a protein called BDNF (Brian-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). This BDNF has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and acts as a reset switch. That's why we often feel so at ease and things are clear after exercising.

At the same time, endorphine, another chemical to fight stress is released in your brain. The endorphins main purpose is this writes researcher Mcgovern:

"The endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise, block the feeling of pain and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria."

So BDNF and endorphins are the reasons exercise make us feel good and eventually happy!

Holidays

There are many holidays I went, all of them in my country except one holiday that I'm going to talk about now. It was the summer of February 2014 when my mom decide to spend her salary on mother-sons holidays to New York city for two weeks. All of the sudden me and my brothers were packing our things for winter holidays on NY, and discuss about the clothes we should pack considering the frost weather that NY has.
I remember that we had a lot of expectations, most of them because of the movies and our anxiety to go to a unknown place with an unfamiliar language. Plus we had never visiting other countries for holidays, so our mood became very enthusiastic and expectant back then.

although we spent two weeks in NY, our holiday was very rewarding. We achieve to visit the entire "must-visit" list which consist basically on go to places like Central park, Liberty statue, Empire state, etc.
I had a lot of fun visiting the street of NY

A country I would like to visit...

Greenland is a country I would like to visit, there is a town called Qeqertarsuaq which is very attractive. Qeqertarsuaq is located on the south coast of Disko island on the west coast of Greenland, founded on 1773.

Among the many attractions it has, see the sun shining over the glaciers on midnight, sailing between whales, contemplate aurora borealis, travel on the tundra with dog sledding.

You also see icebergs of the size of the Empire State!

What about the gastronomy there?

Well, since Greenland is an arctic island with little agriculture and no land transport, so there, the food is local or not! You can image how the dishes are, something like the image below

There are some curious facts about this place like:

-Exist a probability that the iceberg which make the Titanic sink came from this place

-The first brewery here invented the Ice beer, with water from the icebergs

So, visiting this country and this little town would be very fun!

My blogging experience

At the beginning, when we started writing on blogspot, I did not like it, I suppose because I wasn't used to it and never tried it before. Now I think I've changed my mind, while writing my blogs I realized that I was enjoying it, of course like I said not in my very first blog but after that I started to feel that it is fun. Blogging is a good way to express yourself and know more about other people.

What about my writing skills? Well I always been a person who can understand english better than talk or write it, because I have read more english than talk or write it. So doing blogs keeps the balance between read and writing skills. Actually I think that my writing skills has been improved because I have to constantly look for new words or translate the ones I know in spanish. Even though I have to use the translator constantly I made a considerable progress.

I would like to include some kind of "book club" where we write our own histories like a novel, it must be assessed by the teacher of course and then we could tell the tales in front of our classmates. I think it would be fun and enriching. Maybe it could be done on the blogspot platform.

I would like to write more about scientific stuff, it is fun to me and gives feedback about the career itself

From the invisible to the visible world and back...

Gold Nanoparticles in Chemotherapy

This technique is used to cancer treatments using colloidal gold, a colloidal suspension of submicrometre-size nanoparticles of gold in fluids, like water. It could also be use for arthritis treatment as well. 

Colloidal gold can be use to target tumors and provide detection using SERS (Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy), this means the technique may detect single molecules involved in the tumor growth. To specifically target tumors cells the gold particles bond an antibody against, for example, epidermal growth factor receptors, then, this antibody bonds the growth factor receptors making gold particles accumulate in tumors due to the leakiness of tumor vasculature. The acumulation of gold particles can be used as contrast agents for enhanced imaging in a optical tomography system using short pulse lasers for skin cancer detection (or another one).

Therefore gold particles have the potential to join numerous therapeutic functions by targeting specific tumors cells, tissues and organs.

Although this technique is relatively new and promising, there some topics to worry about, like toxic precursors, toxicity in vivo and in vitro and the drug delivery system.

I wanted to share this technique because is an amazing tool against the cancer and could provide better strategies to shrink or destroy tumors cells, besides as it provides specific target, the normal tissue may not be harm, affected or deteriorated because of the chemotherapy which means that the patient, in the worse of cases, could last for more years and have a better life during the treatment or why not? Defeat the cancer!

The most enjoyable subject thus far

The most enjoyable subject so far is chemical laboratory techniques alongside with general chemistry, I think both of them are complementary to each other although in slightly manner. Laboratory techniques is a practical subjects where we learn how to manipulate lab equipment and the basis of chemist procedures. Also in this subject we have some theoretical class, of course, before mess with the lab, you have to know how it works and how deal with lab equipment.

Basic used techniques like destilation, filtration, volume and density measurements are some few thing that we do in this subject and all of them are under supervision of our teachers.

This subject is the most related to laboratory job than other subjects we have in the career so far and that's why I like it because it will be very useful along of the career and also entertaining.

Some of the lab equipments that we have to use are: Beakers, graduated cylinder, erlenmeyer flask, Bunsen burner, volumetric flasks, buret, electronic balance, test tubes. I personally like to use the buret to make titulations, a technique where you can use an acid and a base and you neutralized them to calculate the concentration from any of them

Person or expert you admire

There are no many persons I admire or persons that I really estimate as I could make some kind of list of "people I admire definitely". But there is a person about I read his biographyand and I really liked it, his name is Craig Venter. Venter is an biotechnologist, biochemist and geneticist known for being one of the first to sequence the human genome and the first to transfect a cell with synthetic genome, this last achievement is the one I admire because of its advanced and hard science implications although I actually read his book "A decoded life" about the human genome code but I check out about the synthetic genome.

Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In is youth, he did not take his edutacion seriously, preffering to spend his time on the water in boats or surfing. Although he was against the Vietnam War, Venter was drafted and enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive-care ward of a field hospital. Being confronted with wounded, maimed, and dying people every day instilled in him a desire to study medicine (although he later switched to biomedical research).

Venter Began his college education at University of California, San Diego, where he studied under biochemist Natah O. Kaplan. He received a Bachelor of science in biochemistry in 1972 and PhD in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both on the same University

A photograp you like

Well, I have to admit that I never been a fan of taking photographaps but I remember one day, when I was very bored, I took  a new camera from my brother's desk and started take photos of anything just to do something. Before I realized it, I took photographies from my cats and this is what came up:

Oh, something came up, when i was looking for this photo i also found another photographies that I took, now I'm realizing how exited I was by the way.

I like the right side photo, I think its li the perspective of how the earth would see us from the inside out or maybe, the perspective of how ants would see the world

About Books and Films

I have always liked watch movies, since my family, in my opinion are addicted to movies so they introduced me to the world of movies and by the way, the world of books, my mom really likes to read. I still remember when my family gathered every sundays to watch movies after midday, we enjoyed films like Forrest Gump, Up, Toy Story, The lord of the rings, Titanic, Life is beatiful and so on through more entertaining movies.

I think I don't have favourites movies, there are many movies that I like so much by equally but I can name a few ones: Fight Club, Her, PK, Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, The blind side

I believe that television series might be mentioned on this topic like Breaking Bad, Doctor House, Lost, three television series that I enjoyed it every season and I might watch them all again

What about books? Well, since I was a child I liked to read, I read the Harry Potter saga and Tolkien's book like The lord of the rings and The hobbit. Now, I'm reading a book called The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, a mystery novel and a postmodern fiction. Its quite interesting, I really enjoying it. 

About pets

As far as I remember when I was a child my family had many different kind of pets. I had some bad experiences with pets,one of them was with a hamster (among many other ones) that I  unfortunately somehow take its life away, it must have been very sad to my older brothers because they requested my parents to have those animals, anyways, i was only a child. Other kind of animals that I remember are turttles, turtles that lived on a giant aquarim with beatiful ornaments and accesories, I think that's why I really liked feed them, honestly I think they're very boring, maybe people like turtles because of their aquarium and how they could decorate it.
Rabbits are the other kind of animals that my family used to have, I think they are beatiful animals but I don't remember other things about them. I also had, as people say, "the man's best friend", she called "Amanda", she was homeless so my family take care and adopted her. I really like Amanda because she was very playful and lovely.
Now I have 4 cats from different places, yes, we always adopt homeless pets, I think they are like more grateful than market animals. The bad thing is that they always fight with each other but anyways, they are my favourite pets I've had.

My favorite piece of technology

As a music enthusiast I have to choose the guitar as my favorite piece of technology. Growing up, my brother introduced me to music. Intrigued by the sounds he burst into existence with his guitar I started to learn. That's why this instrument in particular means so much to me. Seen how he played and how deep his passion was for music I felt dragged into the same hole of passion that he fell into when he was young. 

Soon I learned that as you master an instrument you also make it a way to express yourself. I played and bursted into the strings everything I was. Maybe the same feeling it's different for everyone else, that's what makes the guitar so special to me. The feelings evoked when I push those strings come from a special place in my memory and my heart. 

Getting to know each other...

Hello! My name is Ignacio alfaro the younger of three brothers. As a young man, my father travelled from Santiago to Antofagasta to study engineering in catholic university of north. There he met my mother, who studied the engeneering too. They got married and had three childrens, Jorge, Felipe and me. My brothers were born in Antofagasta and I was born in Santiago on January 17 of 1996. I studied in Terra Nova school, wanting to study Medicine but also liking Biochemestry, I went one year to a pre-university where I had to choose, depending on the PSU results, between medicine or biochemestry. I decided to go to Santiago de Chile University where I'm studiyng biochemestry nowadays.

Why did I choose biochemistry?

When I was at primay school I do not  remember thinking about my future, back then I used to play tennis actively. I think my parents were convinced that I would keep on playing tennis because I was "disconnected"from all the school stuff, like science. So, how come did I end up choosing a career related to chemistry and biology? I quit tennis and started to get closer to school stuff, that's when I realized I like to study subjects like biology. During high school studies I had a extraordinary professor of chemistry/biology who introduced me to the world of science. Thanks to him, I started to read interesting science stuff like papers, books,  biographies etc.

There was a medicine student who also was a ex-student of my high school, he did medicine and molecular biology classes so I was first in line! He inspired me to follow his footsteps. Even though he was studying Medicine, what I was most intrigued about was the biochemistry behind everything he taught me. Only now I realize that the only reason for wanting to study medicine instead of biochemistry was him. So charmed -and a little blinded- by his shadow I wanted to follow his same path to the letter. Again, only now I realize that the path to follow had to be forged by me and only me. I now... I was very young back then.

Finally, after taking the PSU for the second time I had no option but to go into Biochemistry, maybe it felt a little bit like settling at the time, but I am very happy with how things worked out at the end. Currently doing my best to get good grades, and enjoying the beginning of my days in college.