Biology Personal Statement

Education has always been important to me and at the risk of sounding too cliché, learning is simply something I have always enjoyed. As the first member of my mother’s side of the family to graduate from university I am always appreciative to have had to motivation and the means to continue my education.

My love of learning new things would follow me throughout grade school and I was always interested in taking whatever new classes were offered, however, biology caught my interest in sixth grade and has yet to let go. In science class, as it was just called ‘science’ class in sixth grade, I was asked to create a basic model of the animal cell. I had only the barest of notions as to what biology really was at that point, only that it was

Though working within the medical community was something I desired I found myself too attached to the science behind the procedure than the actual performance of the procedure. I was under a pretty distinct impression from everyone I met that since I liked science and more specifically biology I should be a doctor; as if there were only one career choice for those interested in any scientific field. It wasn’t until heading to university that I truly realized I could be a scientist and not a doctor; the terms were not mutually

We designed an apparatus and worked with solutions such as Beijerinck’s solution and Hunter’s trace stock solution for TAP medium needed to deprive the algae of nitrogen availability. The hopes were to increase the oil production of the algae through methods of stress, one of which was nitrogen starvation. Several groups of nitrogen fixing and nitrogen starved algae were monitored for nearly two years with modifications to the experiment to better monitor nitrogen fixation and oil production. We monitored daily cell counts, pH, daily cell size, as well as daily absorbance readings to determine oil production differences between the stressed and non-stressed algae. We had hoped to ultimately determine the influence of the DGAT gene on triglyceride production by single celled algae when under the effects of stress. Absorption results were ultimately inconclusive but a notable increase in cell size was found indicating oil storage was