Connections With Past Knowledge

          When friends and family have asked me how my Biochemistry class is going, most are a bit shocked at my emphatic response: I love it. I love this class precisely because of the connections it has created for me between the other areas of science I previously studied.
          I knew right away in our first class that this would be the case. We were asked to look at a titration curve and give our best guess interpretation of the information in front of us. Prior to this summer, I would have been clueless. Yet, as I studied for the MCAT exam last year, I found that I was teaching myself a great number of concepts; titration curves were one of these. So my interest was piqued during that first lecture when I realized this class will strengthen my knowledge of previous concepts, as well as tie them together across the multiple disciplines from which they were first introduced.
          Since then I have continued to connect our lessons in this class with previously encountered information. Most strikingly, Biochemistry has thus far seemed to provide a comprehensible bridge between lessons learned in Biology and those learned in Organic Chemistry. Biology was the study of life. Orgo was the study of chemistry related to carbon and its importance. More specifically, Orgo began to show how so much of our biological processes are dictated by the chemical rules and mechanisms covered in that course. I studied polarities, acids, bases, hydrolysis reactions, kinetics, activation energies, isoelectric points, peptide formations, and so much more. While many of the terms and molecules occasionally rang familiar bells from Biology class, the context in which they were discussed felt somewhat detached from their real world applications in living organisms.
          Yet in Biochemistry thus far, many of these concepts and molecules are being readdressed in ways which connect their Organic properties with the biological functions I had simply accepted at face value. Now, Biochem seems to be allowing me to connect dots between how things happen and why they happen, biologically and chemically speaking. For example, instead of simply memorizing curved arrow mechanisms, I have now seen how hydrolysis and saponification are used to break down triacyglycerols. Or for instance, instead of learning to recognize bonds with generic R groups, I have now seen that I am able to recognize bonds like phosphodiester linkages within essential DNA molecules.
          Learning how chemical properties dictate the biological functions which enable life to exist, has thus far fostered connections between my prior studies. Building these bridges between disciplines has furthered my comprehension of each topic. Synthesizing various disciplines into a cohesive understanding of biological systems has left me eager to discover what connections I will make next.