Neurochemistry: reflections on a semester

While this year has been anything what I expected. I cannot say anything other than neurochemistry was an incredibly useful course to take that furthered my understanding of chemistry. At the beginning of the semester, I was somewhat hesitant to take the class simply due to my lack of a strong biology background. This feeling existed especially because I had to take the class in order to graduate with my degree. Despite my initial hesitation about the class, I was able to pick up enough of the biology and biochemistry to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. With my background as an inorganic/non-biological chemist learning how the neurons and the pathways worked was never easy. However, slowly, over the course of the semester I began to feel more comfortable with the cascades and the pathways.
By the end of the semester I, like much of the class, had found my niche: bio-inorganic chemistry. I was able to focus on how metals worked in the brain and how these metals were related to the various diseases.  I had previously been aware of how metals had worked in the body, at least in a general sense. Too much metal means something bad happens, too little metal means something bad happens, and just the right amount meant that something not bad happens. With the diseases we looked at, I came to see that metal plays a much bigger role than I had realized. Zinc, something that had only been discussed as having some interesting chemical properties due to its full valence shell, is arguably the most important metal in the body other than maybe iron. Zinc is found in almost every enzyme that humans, and many mammals, need to survive even a short time. While iron is used to transport oxygen to various tissues to allow the Krebs cycle and generally help with the oxidation process.
Ultimately, I’m very glad that I took this class because I now feel confident on biochemistry, something I had been somewhat shaky on, and am significantly more confident on how metals react and work with nonmetals. Metals are a truly interesting topic for me, and seeing how metals play out across so many different systems was quite interesting and something I am very thankful for. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find myself doing bio-inorganic chemistry and I’ll look back at this page in order to better understand some of the reactions I had previously looked out. Until then, happy holidays, and have a fantastic new year!