Autobiography of YOU - Graduate Students at DFCI -
in alphabetic order -
From:
Nathan Schauer
Cancer Biology at DFCI
PhD Candidate in Chemical Biology
Harvard University
Growing up, I spent most of my time outside of class working on student newspapers and doing a lot of reading and writing. My favorite part of working in journalism was the ability to ask hard questions and learn the inner workings of different organizations that didn't always want to have their secrets revealed. To me, chemical biology research doesn't feel too far off from that. You poke and prod at cells to figure out what's going on in there, and as long as you put a lot of work and integrity into your questions, you can come up with some really interesting answers. My lab studies ubiquitin, a molecule that's everywhere inside the cell and plays a huge role in directing proteins and enzymes to where they need to go (including the recycling bin). Ubiquitin is constantly being put onto and taken off proteins, and we're interested in gumming up the works to freeze the system and figure out how it works, what it does to the cell, and whether it can be used as a tool in fighting cancer. That kind of tinkering is one of the joys of basic science research, and like journalism, the answers can yield some pretty amazing discoveries.
Nathan Schauer
Cancer Biology at DFCI
PhD Candidate in Chemical Biology
Harvard University
Growing up, I spent most of my time outside of class working on student newspapers and doing a lot of reading and writing. My favorite part of working in journalism was the ability to ask hard questions and learn the inner workings of different organizations that didn't always want to have their secrets revealed. To me, chemical biology research doesn't feel too far off from that. You poke and prod at cells to figure out what's going on in there, and as long as you put a lot of work and integrity into your questions, you can come up with some really interesting answers. My lab studies ubiquitin, a molecule that's everywhere inside the cell and plays a huge role in directing proteins and enzymes to where they need to go (including the recycling bin). Ubiquitin is constantly being put onto and taken off proteins, and we're interested in gumming up the works to freeze the system and figure out how it works, what it does to the cell, and whether it can be used as a tool in fighting cancer. That kind of tinkering is one of the joys of basic science research, and like journalism, the answers can yield some pretty amazing discoveries.