Question: Is signal transdution an area of research that you would recommend to A level students looking to do a science related degree?

Dalya Soond answered on 11 Jun 2011:

Sure, why not? There is so much intersting stuff to learn and you wouldn’t just be studying the biochemistry….If you studied for instance the signal transduction behind say the EGF receptor, you would also have to learn WHY it is important….how it helps cells divide (and then you’d learn some cell biology about mitosis) and how it is important in disease (very common mutation in lung cancer) and how understanding the signal transduction can be used to kill just the disease cells rather than all rapidly dividng cells like the lining of the gut which is what happens with chemotherapy. So then you will also learn a bit about how drugs are developed. Overall, you would get a very broad understanding of biological concepts and how we can use them for the good of society. Or maybe that is a bit more than you might learn at A level, but you would still get a good grounding in biology. Lotsa luck with that and this is of course my topic, so ask as many questions as you want since I will know more about it than UFOs!