The student population of LANL is fairly diverse and immensely fascinating. I have made friends from schools all over the country in many different programs of study. My core group of friends is made up primarily of physicists, geologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, biologists, and political scientists. There's truly never a dull moment, and nobody knows how to have a good time like a scientist. It's through these amazing new people in my life that I've had the opportunity to explore research areas outside of network security and high-performance computing.
One of my close friends here, Brian, is attending MIT in the fall to study computational biology. He's incredibly brilliant, and I get to have some of the most fascinating and entertaining conversations with him. He and I have spent a great deal of time discussing his research interest: protein folding. For those that don't know, when ribosomes (the construction factories within mitochondria) generate the polypeptides that make up proteins, they do so by stringing them together into long strands of peptides. After synthesis has completed, they are in a random coil state until they start to quickly fold into their final three-dimensional structure.
The modeling of this process is only part of his research interest. If we can understand, ab initio, how the protein folding process works, we can predict the structure of various proteins. Once we've determined how these peptides/amino acids interact with one another, we could begin to catalog their 3D structures. If we knew how to identify a protein from its 3D structure, we could more easily discover treatments or cures for diseases such as HIV or the amyloidoses such as Alzheimers or Huntington's disease.
As you can tell, I have become enamored with this research topic. I will admit that Brian's charisma has much to do with my interest in the field of computational biology and biophysics, but what spurred my recent spree of discovering how these mechanisms work is some research being done at MIT:
Modeling the Unfolded State of Tau Protein
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia among older populations. The disease exhibits distinctive pathological hallmarks – extracellular aggregates of amyloid β peptide, known as amyloid plaques, and intracellular aggregates of tau protein, known as neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The proteins found in these aggregates are not only disease markers, but are suspected to play a role in the disease process. The focus of our studies is tau protein, which is a natively unfolded, microtubule-associated protein. Specifically, our goal is to elucidate the molecular basis of tau dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies with the aid of computational models of tau in normal and disease states. Furthermore, these models are used to design and optimize peptide inhibitors to tau-induced neurotoxicity.
My grandmother recently passed away, and I was extremely saddened by her decline. She had late-onset Alzheimer's, and toward the end could not remember much, if anything. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia steal the pleasure of dying gracefully with dignity and replace it with a nightmarish hellscape of confusion. This is no way for any person to have to spend their final years. This research could potentially allow biochemical engineers to develop treatments for Alzheimer's that wholly inhibit the disease's progress.
Computational biology and computational biophysics is a relatively new field with incredible research being done at universities across the country. Doctoral programs for computational biophysics exist at Washington University, MIT, USCB, Berkeley, UCSF, UMD College Park, and many others. That's the beginning of my list of graduate schools to which I'll be sending applications, by the way. I'm hoping that the OPM will allow me to do a one-year post-baccalaureate appointment at LANL and then continue on with my doctoral work in computational biology or biophysics (henceforth referred to as CBP).
I have already begun formulating research projects and theses based on current research at universities in CBP. The options seem limitless right now. Brian and I discussed this last night, and he informed me that this field is very, very young. It is the current, bleeding edge of biology, and should have an exceptionally lasting impact on the state of affairs in biological systems analysis. The computer science research topics inherent in the field are, in themselves, fascinating.
It's not all biology review and coding this summer, however. I met several of my friends via a Facebook group for students at LANL when one of them asked if anyone wanted to be in a band. I've since been collecting gear and playing with Ableton Suite 8.2. I play keys and do some singing. It feels amazing to have an outlet for musical expression again.
If ever presented with an opportunity to intern at one of America's national laboratories, do not hesitate. Apply, get accepted, and enjoy your summer or year or two. This has truly been a life-changing experience.
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