Where my bio began...

Sigma is doing a promotion/competition thing at the moment called "Where bio begins" which seems quite interesting. The aim is to get scientists to show, through a variety of media, what sparked their interest in biology, why they decided to study it and why they find it so fascinating. I'm not sure whether I'll enter for the competition (they need my real name unfortunately) but it's a great idea and it sort of got stuck in my head. Why am I doing biology, and where did bio begin for me?

There are a lot of answers to that. Something about my childhood probably, about how I found everything exciting and was encouraged to explore a lot. Something about my schooling, which was quite science oriented. Something about my personality and the traits which allow me to love lab-work, even when it hates me in return, and probably something about science itself, which is so amazing and beautiful.

I think the biggest moment for me though was when I first saw a picture of the inside of a cell, containing all the details of the organelles. I was sixteen at the time, and cells up until then had just been drawn as blobs, with maybe a little blob inside labelled 'nucleus'. To suddenly see the whole crowded, busy and breathtakingly complex cellular interior was a bit of a revelation because basically what my mind saw was something like this:
It was another world in there. And I've been hooked on that world ever since.

---

Map is (c) Me. It was fun to draw and I am very proud of the trees and the boat. My favourite bit is the dragon sitting on top of the cell, because it's a dragon sitting on top of a cell.

Follow me on Twitter!