Foreign Perspectives

This is basically a distance learning version of the Queen’s molecular biology masters so similar amount of theory but no practical work and the project would be literature based too.

It’s structured as a choice of two out of three certificate courses and you can do it part-time over two or three years.

The first (effectively compulsory) certificate is Principles of protein structure. This covers “the structure of proteins, and how that structure is related to both a protein’s sequence and its function. It provides a background to the discipline of structural molecular biology. That is: how protein structures are built up, how the structure of proteins contributes to functions that are common to all living things, as well as differences between them, how knowledge of protein structure has led to the development of drugs against diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS, how to use software to manipulate and explore 3D, models of protein structure, and to view models of molecules in motion.” ie pretty much as you’d expect from a molecular biology masters.

In theory, you have a choice of one from the remaining two programmes but Protein Crystallography is really a specialist course and in reality I suspect that most people actually do Techniques in Structural Molecular Biology which runs through the various techniques used including protein expression, purification and crystallisation, protein bioinformatics, X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and electron microscopy.

You do two projects, one tied to each of the certificate programmes that you’ve done so I imagine that you could either do those following the certificate or leave them both to the end (hence two or three years to do the masters).

Cost-wise, the Birkbeck masters is £3975/year over two years or £2700/year over three years compared to the £4900 for the Queens molecular biology & biotechnology masters over one year and about £4600 for the Open University medicinal chemistry masters over about three years.

One thing that strikes me when I looked at the detailed course content that Birkbeck describe is that with doing both biology and chemistry, I’ve covered a lot of the ground eg protein structure, molecular modelling and a number of the analysis tools like NMR and microscopy. Whilst presumably the masters courses will cover such things in somewhat more detail, my pre-existing knowledge should make it an easier ride than it would have been otherwise. It also strikes me that at masters level, molecular biology seems to become a whole lot closer to chemistry which in turn is making the medicinal chemistry masters more attractive.

For a very long time, the social security payments scheme in Northern Ireland was more or less identical but separate from the scheme in the mainland. Thus, for example, if you retired in Northern Ireland and then moved to England, your retirement pension would be paid from the English system but the amount would be the same.

However, up until the early 1990s there were separate computer systems to do this in Northern Ireland and in England. Then with the replacement of the English system in the 1990s, the running of the systems gradually moved to England and the various computer teams supporting the old Northern Ireland systems were disbanded.

Roll that forward 20-odd years and the reform of social security that is taking place in England, Scotland and Wales hasn’t, yet, been accepted.

Options as to how to proceed are quite limited.

Firstly, NI could carry on with the old system for a while. There are penalties of, at present, £5 million a month being applied and that’ll have consequences for the non-social security money i.e. there would need to be substantial cuts to balance the books. However, there’s only one computer system now, run in a number of centres across the country but supported centrally and that’s rather a bigger problem. Once the mainland change over to universal credit, support for the old systems will stop and those support teams will disband. The NI computer system is actually in England and, in principle, NI could buy that but what they can’t buy is the support team as that will be moving on to the new system. Outcome of this option? Well, something like 2 or 3 years from now the social security payments in NI will simply stop being paid because the computer system which is paying them now will either be switched off or, if it’s not, it will develop a fault and the team that currently fixes faults won’t exist. In practice, this is likely to end in chaos.

Second, continue on with the old system but get a replacement to avoid the consequences of the switch-off above. Again, there are the penalties to contend with. However, more significant is that 2 to 3 year deadline: it just isn’t long enough to train up a new support team, even if the will to do that were there (which it isn’t) and the GB teams were able to train up a backup team (unlikely in the timeframe). It would also be seriously expensive as the GB systems were written with much larger IT teams than are usual in NI (around 10 times as large) so running costs would be much higher per capita.

Third, agree the changes in welfare in NI. Best option probably, but seemingly rather unlikely to happen.

Fourth, give back the social security to direct rule. Not that different from the previous option but probably a whole lot better from the point of view of the local politicians as they’ll be able to argue that the cuts are imposed directly by London.

So what’s likely to happen? The possibility of social security payments simply stopping should focus the minds of the politicians but they don’t seem to believe that the computer system would be switched off – what they haven’t allowed for is that without support, it’ll just stop working sooner or later. Neither of the first two options are great for NI given the penalties that will be applied and the consequences for public services. Options 3 and 4 aren’t great politically so unlikely to happen before the upcoming elections.

As well as the molecular biology masters at Queen’s, there’s also the medicinal chemistry masters at the Open University to think about.

I’ve been toying with that off and on for the past couple of years as a possible next step. In practical terms, it’s just over the fence from molecular biology, looking at similar topics but from the chemistry angle.

As always, there’s a research skills module Developing research skills in science (S825) which is used by many of the OU science masters qualifications ie isn’t really directly related to medicinal chemistry.

Molecules in medicine (S807) is the main taught module and covers infectious diseases (bacterial and viral), cancer, heart disease, inflammation and neuropharmacology which reads like a biology module but presumably looks at things from the chemistry angle.

Concept to clinic (S827) is a smaller module which looks at the drug discovery and development process from a modern and historical perspective and introduces you to a range of issues in drug discovery. So it’s got some similarities to my current Drug Design (S346) module but with more of an emphasis on the design rather than synthesis.

Finally, there’s the MSc project module for MSc in Medicinal Chemistry (SXM810) which is based in the areas of the Molecules in Medicine and/or Concept to Clinic modules.

Plus points of the medicinal chemistry masters are that it’s going to be easy to fit around real life and it seems a lot simpler to get into (no need to gather together references etc.). On the downside, it doesn’t seem to offer quite such an easy route into the doctorate and has none of the lab work either.

A few weeks back when I was at the Queen’s open day the course director for the molecular biology masters kindly offered to send me the course calendar and research topics. I finally got around to dropping him a line yesterday and received a really rapid reply which is encouraging in itself and the content just as much.

The first semester has six hours a week starting with Protein structure & function in the first month and moving on to Advanced molecular biology (Nucleic Acid Structure and Function) in the second. Alongside that is a couple of hours a week of  Foundations for research in the biosciences (including literature review). The second semester has three hours a week of Biotechnology (a certificate course linked with the MSc) and four of Bio-entrepreneurship and Advanced Skills. That doesn’t include lab time or the project but seems almost doable full-time alongside work. Naturally, there’d also be additional study time required in addition to that ie it’s not just 12 hours a week work.

The final semester is taken up entirely with the research project of which the topics cover quite a range with some sounding quite fascinating (eg “Characterisation of macromolecular biosignatures for life detection in hostile environments such as those on Mars”) and others a big yuck (eg “Recovery and recycling of phosphorus from waste”) but with a “something for everyone” feel about the list.

Now “all” I need to do is to a) get a decent mark from my final life sciences course and b) work out how to fit the masters in with real life.

The workload on S346 seems to be over the hump now with no more tutorials scheduled and only the end of module assessment (EMA) to be done.

For a change, the EMA is pretty much the same format as the normal assessments albeit with more, but shorter, questions. The nine questions cover pretty much all of the course in sequence so the first three questions are on the first, mainly biological, book, then there are several on the various chemical syntheses, one on retrosynthetic analysis and it finishes off with a question on a protein synthesis and one to get you to analyse a research paper.

The net effect of that is that some are more difficult than others. For me the first three biological questions and the research paper seem particularly easy so I’ve those completed. The fourth question seems to have been one that’s floored a number of people but, once the method is found, it seems relatively doable.

Easy doesn’t mean quick to do though. As usual for me, chemistry questions take me ages to do – for the EMA something like an hour or two seems about right for me.