ChemSemBlog

The Chemistry seminar presented to us on January 21 was presented by Robert E. Minto from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis chemistry/biochemistry department. His focus is on biological chemistry, a field that I thought was synonymous with biochemistry, until it was later clarified with the definition that biochemistry deals more with metabolism (photosynthesis, citric acid cycle) whereas biological chemists are more interested in the chemical side of biology outside of metabolism. Although Dr. Minto currently teaches at IUPUI he received his BS at the University Of Waterloo, Ontario, he then went on to the University of California, Berekley where he received his doctorate, and conducted his postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University.

The core of his research, lipids, is not a topic highly researched outside of the diet/health industry, and even so their only concern is getting rid of it. Although studying lipid for health reasons is important, Dr. Minto taught us that there are many other practical uses for studying lipids. First of all since there is hardly any research in this field, many of the fungi genes aren’t mapped! Now this was something new to me, I thought everyone was obsessed with genomes, structure, and function in the biological world, but Dr. Minto was quick to point out that this only occurs where there is money, and since fungi genomes aren’t at the top of everybody’s list, well there isn’t much out there.

Specifically, Minto has focused his research on desaturase and acetylenase genes. The second reason why studying these genes and enzymes are important is because, we can uncover the way unsaturated acids conduct metabolism (he beat the biochemists to this one!). And finally the third reason, but certainly not the last reason (I am sure there are countless reasons for lipid studies) is that there are many medical uses (the pharmaceutical companies are doing cartwheels) such as antimicrobial and antiproliferative agents and HIV reverse-transcriptase inhibitors. Impressive.

Overall the basic ideas of his presentation were great. I got kind of lost in all of the mechanisms and the intricacies of what his research entailed, but I got the main point. Although there has been lots of negative feedback on his presentation style, I didn’t see a problem with it, I think the subject matter was just not as interesting and so people tuned him out. The only criticism I’d give would be to decrease the length of the presentation, and retract to a more basic knowledge level, so we don’t get lost in the details!

Questions I have are: 1.How difficult is it conducting research in a field that is not well studied? 2. Most of his studies were conducted in vitro but how well adjusted is that to predicting an in vivo replication of the experiment? 3. Have any pharmaceutical taken interest in your studies?

Post This To My

Hide Sites