Integrative Biology Personal Statement

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My name is Eric Kohn, and I am applying to the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates in Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. As a child, my grandmother during her battle with lung cancer inspired an interest in medicine, and altruism. I debated between a career in healthcare and a career in science throughout high school, but my experience in organic chemistry solidified my choice to pursue research as a profession. Although I was drawn in by its biological significance, I became fascinated with the elegance and fundamentality of reaction mechanisms, and scored in the 99th percentile of Rowan University students on the standardized final exam. My experiences have inspired me to pursue a career researching methods of preventing disease, …show more content…

Gregory Caputo, studying the effects of ionic liquids on protein unfolding. Ionic liquids are a relatively new class of substances that exhibit several properties that are desirable to the pharmaceutical industry. Although promising, ionic liquids represent a wide range of chemical species, and have not been implemented long enough to discern health effects. My research uses the mammalian muscle protein, myoglobin, to model the impact of ionic liquids on human tissue. I use visible light, circular dichroism, and fluorescence spectroscopy, as well as Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and kinetic absorbance assays developed by my lab to monitor the unfolding of myoglobin in ionic liquid environments. Using these data, I calculated the Gibb’s free energy of the functional protein in the presence of each ionic liquid, to compare their relative stabilities. In the year that I have worked on this project, I have presented my data at three research conferences, including the American Chemical Society National …show more content…

After graduation, I will pursue a Ph.D. in chemical biology or cell biology, as well as a career as a research professor. My research interests include the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a structure in cell membranes that our immune system uses to discern our own cells from those of pathogens; and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), short chains of amino acids with bactericidal properties. Research into these fields will expand our understanding of the human immune system, and may lead to treatments for diseases caused by drug-resistant bacteria, viruses, and

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