If I want to become a genetic engineer,do I need to go to medicine to get an MD or is biology ok?
I live in Europe
bimp
>>7710501
I don't know if biology is enough (it might require more than a degree), but at least in Spain there's a Biochemistry degree.
>>7710529
I mean,I plan on doing a masters and a Phd after,but a friend of mine insists that I need medical school to get started on the path
bemp
>>7710542
But keep in mind that genetics is only a small part of the medical school curriculum. You'll mostly study anatomy, physiology, all kind of different diseases, pharmacology, and obviously, you'll have a lot of clinical practice. At least, in my faculty.
Genetic engineering, that is, genome manipulation, isn't the main focus of medical school.
Also, the only thing that you actually study is the human body. Since you're interested in genetics, it'd be wiser to choose a degree that'd give equal interest to every species.
That's all I can say. I'm still a med student, so take my words with a grain of salt.
In any case, I've spent more time in the dissecting room than in a lab.
>>7710638
so would biology be ok? what would you recommend
>>7710501
That looks like a nickel solution.
>>7710646
Degrees vary. Is there a molecular biology or biochemistry degree at the university you want to go for? The choose that.
>>7710646
Biology sounds nice. Try to see if there's any Biochemistry/Genetics/Molecular Biology degree.
Also, it'd be better if you looked for the subjects that are taught in each degree, and see if there's any preference for genetic engineering. Take into account that it'll vary depending on the university.
It'd be great if a genetic engineer could actually answer on this thread though.
>>7710501
molecular biology includes genetics
It depends on the domain you want to work on. Genetic engineering can be on plants, animals, bacteria or on humans (gene therapy for the moment, might be more interesting if we have authrorization to work on embryo). Except the human part, you will need to go to Molecular Biology + a specialization in whatever domain you want (plants, bacteria...).
For the human domain, you can either go from Molecular Biology/Genetics with research on Molecular Biology/stem cells or through medicine with a specialization on research (depends of your country after that and I don't know so much about medicine since I come from Biology).
As others have said, don't become an MD if you want to do genetic engineering, the two are very different. Medical doctors treat patients in hospital, they do not work in a genetics lab. Not to say you couldn't try going this route, there may be some out there that do, such as clinical researchers who get paid to pump mystery drugs (gene therapy) into patients to test their efficacy. But they don't generally do the actual genetics, research or development themselves.
Medicine=/=Biology
Doctors practice medicine using some biological concepts, but in general simply do not follow them as they should in my opinion. An MD would be a terrible person to have in a genetics lab and I would never hire one as such.
I had similar goals, the closest thing my university offered was microbiology, so that's what I majored in. Most genetic engineering is done using microbes anyway. You could also try biomedical engineering, biochemistry, or biotechnology, if those majors are available to you.
>genetic engineer
what does that even mean? are you talking about the large scale splicing of genes to make potentially valuable mutants? thats *literally* one of the most boring jobs i can think of.
am i the only one thats taken a biochemistry lab course? its fucking tedious and stupid
>>7711495
fuck you I am studying biotechnology engineering and I loved transforming cells and manipulating their metabolism to optimize a process...
OP you should study Biotechnology or genetic engineering or Biochemistry ..
>>7710501
pic related
>>7710501
In the U.S. we have this thing called Computational Biology, and it'd be fucking dope for Genetic Engineering. B.Sc. Computational Biology.
>>7711215
Man this is just straight up false. Plenty of my professors are active researchers and hold an MD in addition to their pHD.
>>7710501
>genetic engineer
MDs don't engineer shit. You'd be doing sciences with biology and engineering it's not the same .
>>7713227
You will be going from an MD to a PhD/research degree not the other way around. A lot of the researchers are actually low level trash who couldn't get into med but doing research is part of med.
Also, biomedical engineering is a meme and plenty of people fall for it. They learn it and find that they have neither the skills in anything biomedically related or engineering related and also the job prospects are shit.
>>7713019
see, it sounds a lot cooler when you say it like that, but in reality "transforming cells" means growing cultures (waiting), introducing a plasmid to the cell (more waiting), growing the culture (waiting waiting), verifying you have what you hoped to make via a ton of time consuming lab work, and then doing incredibly tedious kinetics measurements on the activity of what you made. I'll admit, the outcome is cool, but everything else is boring, tedious, and in biochem, smells like shit.
this is coming from a biochem major.
>>7711495
I'm currently taking a molecular biology course. The idea of transformation and gene cloning is very cool, in practice it's a lot of pipetting.
Still, I'd probably enjoy it more if the lab part wasn't so unorganized at my school.
>>7714968
this guy is in the right
>>7714968
It's almost as if you had to bear frustration and exertion and muster up heaps of patience to achieve something really cool and worthwhile. People who go into something like that must be kinda dim. Why don't they go for all the other easy cool stuff?
