Biochemistry Research Scientist
Pay and Remuneration
Biochemistry professionals can chose from a diverse range of career paths. The salary range for biochemists depended on education types and experience one gets. One can get fellowship of Rs 2 lakhs to 2.5 lakhs per year. When one gain experience the salary ranges from Rs 6 lakhs to 25 lakhs per year.
Career Prospects
The most exciting employment is in environmental and pollution control companies, and the biotechnology industry. Biotech companies use the advances in molecular biology to improve agricultural crops, develop new kinds of drugs, or harness microbes to recycle wastes. Biochemists are also employed by Government or in the private sector, such as a vaccine company, a clinical reference laboratory doing tests for physicians and health departments, or a pharmaceutical corporation. Many industries require biochemists to ensure the safety of their products, such as food processing and the dairy industry.
There are good openings for molecular biologists in the biotech industry, and in research institutes. Teaching is also an option. Medical colleges sometimes hire PhDs in biochemistry to teach medical students although here there is still competition from MDs in biochemistry. If you want to do a PhD, you can either pursue it here in India or look for opportunities abroad.
Famous Personalities
Donald M. Engelman (born 1941) is Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Yale University. He is involved in the creation of new cancer drugs and treatments[5]. For example, Engelman is involved in research to use peptides to aid in destroying tumors.
Har Gobind Khorana also known as Hargobind Khorana (January 9, 1922 – November 9, 2011) was a biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year. Khorana was the first scientist to synthesize oligonucleotides.
Raj Shankar was born on April 2nd in Gorakhpur, India. Indian biochemist. 1960-1962 - Awarded Merit Scholarship under 2nd year plan in India.1964 - Awarded Atomic Energy Scholarship by the Atomic Energy Commission (INDIA). One of Shankar's most lasting contributions is his discovery that the cognitive defects in Alzheimer's disease are caused by a phosphorylation-related problem with protein folding. This influenced Alzheimer's research for years to come.
Allan Charles Wilson (18 October 1934 – 21 July 1991) was a pioneer in the use of molecular approaches to understand evolutionary change and reconstruct phylogenies, and a contributor to the study of human evolution. He was one of the most controversial figures in post-war biology; his work attracted a great deal of attention both from within and outside the academic world. He is the only New Zealander to win the MacArthur Fellowship.
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin, OM, FRS (12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994), née Crowfoot, was a British chemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography.She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
A Day In Life
On a typical day a biochemist's tasks might include to prepare reports and recommendations based on the outcomes of his or her research. Managing a laboratory team and assessing its performance is also one of the important activities of the day. Many a times they remain busy in developing new methods to study the mechanisms of biological processes. Writing research papers, making presentations at scientific conferences, discussing results with colleague and conducting/supervising the experiments are the most fruitful days for biochemist research scientist. These scientist usually study chemical reactions in metabolism, growth, reproduction, and heredity and apply techniques drawn from biotechnology and genetic engineering to help them in their research. To be specific the workday usually includes some laboratory duties, such as culturing, filtering, purifying, drying, weighing, and measuring substances using special instruments. Research goes to the study the effects of foods, drugs, allergens and other substances on living tissues. Many biochemists are also interested in molecular biology, the study of life at the molecular level and the study of genes and gene expression.