Welcome to Science with Shrike! Today we’re going to discuss science curricula. Specifically, what topics you might need to get to the PhD, and which ones you could be expected to use later. On one hand, there is a lot of diversity, depending on your final goal. On the other hand, you should have a broad knowledge base from which to build specific knowledge.
Standard Science Curricula
For those pursuing the biomedical sciences, the standard route is some flavor of Biology or Chemistry degree followed by a PhD in specializing in one aspect of the biomedical sciences. While courses vary from college to college, you usually need something along the lines of the following:
Biology Degrees
Freshman Biology
Genetics
Cell Biology
Ecology
Upper division biology electives (usually ~40 credits in biology, counting the initial ones)
Upper division electives include General Microbiology, plus advanced topics like Molecular Biology, Immunology, Virology, Medical Microbiology, and other more specialized courses
In addition to the Biology, you need a base in math, physics and chemistry. This often looks like
Calculus
(maybe statistics)
Freshman Physics
Freshman Chemistry
Organic Chemistry
Biochemistry
This is rounded out with all of the nonsense you are required to take to keep the Humanities departments in business (aka ‘General education’ requirements). We’re going to ignore that nonsense for now, though Shrike has previously discussed Gen Eds with academic credentialing.
Often you can customize this program somewhat by choosing “Molecular Biology” or similarly named biology degree instead of just Biology, or some offer Microbiology. This is one way to ditch the Ecology and related courses that you will never use.
Chemistry Degrees
Freshman Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry I/Titration Hell
Organic Chemistry
Biochemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry II/Playing with fancy toys
Physical Chemistry
Add in the math and physics
Freshman Physics
Calculus
Linear Algebra
In some places, Biochemistry is housed in Chemistry, others it is in Biology. It’s usually more chemistry than other biology degrees and more biology than chemistry degrees.
What do I need?
For those going into biomedical science, let’s discuss which classes (and what parts of them) Shrike uses, or sees colleagues use regularly. Some of these can vary by how they are taught. While the concepts may be critical, if the instructor ignores the key concepts, or doesn’t teach them, then your particular class may still be useless.
Ancillary Science/Math
Calculus –nope
Knowing the idea of how to calculate area under the curve is nice, but the computers do all that math. Some principles of derivatives are useful, but also not something Shrike has needed
Linear Algebra –nope
Solving systems of equations is not something needed regularly. When the math is needed, the computer can handle it.
Statistics –somewhat
Really what is needed is knowing how to use software to do the stats, and which stats you need. For biomedical science, key concepts are different kinds of averages, standard deviation vs standard error. Statistical tests/concepts include t-test, 1-way ANOVA, 2-way ANOVA, correlation coefficients, Chi-squared, and R2, and the non-parametric versions. Knowing the assumptions that go into these tests is also key. Fitting data to linear/logistic models is VERY useful, but not usually taught in stats. The software is key, and preferably something widely used like GraphPad or Excel, or free like R. GraphPad will teach some of these stats nowadays.
If you are going into biostatistics or doing ecology, you will need more way more stats. Otherwise, if you need fancy stats, you pay a biostatistician if it goes beyond Mann-Whitney or Kruskal-Wallis.
Physics –nope
Knowing how to solve equations is helpful, but you learn that in chemistry, too. It’s good information to have, but unless you get into building systems, you won’t need it. If you do plan on building devices, though, you will need more than just intro physics.
Chemistry
Freshman Chemistry –absolutely
This is an essential course that covers a lot of key concepts. The most important concept is M1V1 = M2V2, but setting up stoichiometry and buffer math come up all the time. These concepts underpin all the later biochemistry that you do later.
Organic Chemistry –somewhat
The most important concepts in this course is understanding line structures, resonance structures, chirality, and basic ways organic molecules react with each other. Having some idea of how two molecules might react, or the part of the molecule most likely to do so is helpful later on. The specific reactions tend to be less important, unless you’re doing medicinal chemistry or biophysics. Then this is essential.
Analytical Chemistry I –absolutely
This course gives you a strong grounding in experimental techniques and learning how to analyze your error. The rigor is important to learn here, too.
Analytical Chemistry II –somewhat
If you use any of the toys you learn about/play with, the course is useful. But more likely, it will just be exposure to various chemistry techniques. Nice to have, but likely non-essential.
Inorganic Chemistry –nope
Unless your research ends up focusing on some weird inorganic molecule, it is unlikely to be relevant. Biomedical science studies organic organisms, so that should not be surprising.
Physical Chemistry —nope
Only reason you would need this course is if you get into quantum modeling of biochemical reactions. Then quantum mechanics in the Physics department and Differential Equations in the Math department would also be helpful.
Biochemistry –absolutely
This is another foundational course for biomedical science. Understanding enzyme function, allostery, KD, and knowing your amino acids are central. Especially knowing your amino acids. Start learning them now, even. Michaelis-Menten kinetics may not get used all the time, but good to know. The techniques taught in the labs like Bradford Assays and SDS-PAGE are core techniques.
Biology
Freshman Biology –somewhat
The cell and molecular biology are critical in this course, as is the introductory protein biochemistry. The ecology is useless. Animal physiology is a mixed bag, and the plant stuff is also not relevant for biomedical science.
Genetics –absolutely
This is another foundational course for biomedical science. You need to know DNA inside and out, plus mechanisms of inheritance, complementation and all the other good stuff. Population-level genetics and some of the genomics is also necessary these days.
Cell Biology –absolutely
While this is a foundational course, it is often taught as introductory Molecular Biology/refresher of Freshman Biology. The cell functions that you may or may not get to are the meat of this course, though. How proteins and other macromolecules move through the cell is essential to understanding cell based approaches and delivering small molecules.
Ecology –nope
With one or two exceptions, this will be a waste of your time. The only exception is if you are going into metagenomics, biofilms, and/or gut microbe-human host interactions. Then the introduction to dealing with communities might be useful. But bioinformatics will be more useful.
Upper Division Biology Electives
General Microbiology –somewhat
Learning the lab skills help if you are going to do any molecular biology later. The metabolism and basics of microbial function and genetic control are also helpful. The microbial ecology is less useful, especially if the prof tries to focus on environmental samples. Since this course is often a pre-req for later microbiology courses, it is also useful to unlock those courses.
Molecular Biology –absolutely
This gets into the mechanisms that may have been hinted at in Genetics. Learning how to see mechanisms and signaling pathways is critical. Understanding all of the regulatory games that get played in a cell are also useful as a foundation for later knowledge. Hopefully you learn all of the modern genetic techniques (Cre-lox, CRISPR, RNAi, restriction enzyme-independent cloning) too.
Evolution –nope
The exceptions to the uselessness of this course are if you plan on focusing on evolution of organisms, DNA, and/or proteins. For example, if you plan on joining an evolution lab, or want to trace protein function over the course of evolution. Or if you get into the “RNA world” stuff and how life changes. Maybe if you want to study viral evolution, it would come in handy.
Bioinformatics –absolutely
Learning how to handle big data is a key skill to have. Being able to mine others’ experiments that have been posted online is a cheat code to significance. If you find something new, you can even publish without ever doing a wet lab experiment. If you are going the bioinformatics route, also pick up Python. You can either learn for free on your own time, or take a Computer Science course.
Undergraduate Research –absolutely
Whether you take this as a course, get paid to do it, or volunteer to do it for free, this is essential. Ideal time to start is as a sophomore (i.e. April of your freshman year is when you start looking at labs, or Sept-Oct of your sophomore year), and continue until you graduate. At minimum, you want to get 4 things out of your undergraduate research experience: 1) letter of recommendation for your next step, 2) present at local meeting/get a local research award for your CV, 3) learn how to hold pipettors and use them correctly, and 4) learn a basic technique or two. If you can publish, or present at a national meeting that is even better. Unless all the biomedical PIs are psychopaths, you should be working in a biomedical research lab that does something similar to what you want to eventually do instead of an inorganic chemistry or ecology lab.
Misc courses –somewhat
What about all the other biology (and some chemistry courses)? Well, it depends. The ones focused on molecular mechanisms and general principles of organisms that interact with humans will be helpful. Shrike would strongly recommend those for most in the biomedical science field. Physiology, anatomy, and organism-level courses will be mixed bags, depending on your eventual goal. The random ecology and zoology courses are unlikely to be helpful. If there are -omics courses, they can be helpful, depending on how the course is taught, and your eventual goals.
Other non-Science Courses
Psychology –nope
If you need it for the MCAT, then you have to learn it. But all the useful behavior-related things in science are branded “neuroscience” instead. The most useful courses are ones that teach which mouse or other animal assays model which human psychological traits. Also learning all the different neurons in the brain and what each of them does. Maybe behavioral economics. Maybe.
Computer science –somewhat
Learning to code is a super-power. It will make your life easier for analysis. If you are doing -omics type work or other bioinformatics, some programming skills are essential. Python and R are the two most popular, though knowing how to build websites never hurts.
Nutrition –somewhat
If you’re planning on working on the Big 3 (atherosclerosis, diabetes, hypertension), some of the courses may be useful. But nutrition balances between clinical, dietary guidelines that may or may not be real, and the mechanistic courses that look at physiology. Have to be careful in selecting courses.
Business anything –nope
Unless you need an accounting class, business classes are a waste of time. Look to the Jungle for all of your business related needs outside of accounting. It’s all the applied stuff you will need, and it is up to date.
English writing/composition –nope
If they ever taught how to do science writing, it would be useful. But the creative writing is all poetry, and the “science writing” is often how to write manuals and/or how to write puff journal pieces on how science is cool.
Engineering –somewhat
Depending on your eventual goals, some of the process development may be useful. If you want to work on purifying antibodies or other biologics for clinical use, learning how to think and plan for scale will be helpful. If you plan to stay in basic research, you can pay someone else to do the CMC.
Wrapping Up
You may have noticed there are a lot of ‘it depends’ in the evaluation. This is a good thing for curriculum design because it gives the student many options for what they want to pursue in the future. In Shrike’s opinion, undergraduate work should expose students to many different options, and it is a useful learning exercise to try things outside of your comfort zone/what you expect to like. You might find that your prejudices about a field are wrong. Or you might find areas you thought you would love are much worse than you thought they would be.
Overall, Shrike recommends the courses marked “absolutely” and forming a plan for the “somewhat” courses. Decide what you want to do in biomedical science. It’s ok to make a list of 10 things, even. Figure out which techniques get used most by those areas. Join a research lab in your top pick to see if it is a good fit. If it’s terrible, you can jump ship once to a new lab. If it’s a good fit, see what knowledge is used by the grad students, postdocs and PI. As you narrow your list of techniques/field of interest, focus your coursework in that area to supplement what you learn in the lab. Ask your PI about courses, too, and take the PI recommendation seriously.
If you are not formally trained in science and looking to learn on your own, start with the essential courses, and then expand as your interest allows.
Do you think Shrike missed something? Or disagree with the weighting? Discuss in the comments!