Check my SOP Plsss for grad school in life sciences

Life, the way it is, from the theory of abiogenesis( Oparin and Haldane) to little inanimate molecules inside the cell, working on the ordain of physics to let life happen, has never cease to awe and inspire me from the beginning when I started to comprehend about science itself. The reason why I want to apply for PhD is because I've had a knack for research since my childhood, as I like to delve deep into the matter where leading to the way a chain of questions comes to your mind becomes enthralling and seeking the truth comes to be almost like an obsession even if it means going to the last resort.

While growing up, I found it captivating to question about surviving issues in the interim of uncertainty, as life poses a threat which requires the fittest to thrive. The problem-solving skills are the forte of a human, leading me to concede on one such instinct and that was pertaining to adapting through the ever growing changes in environment, and challenge of circumstances around. As said by the leading evolutionary biologist of all time - Charles Darwin “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change” so what does cause the changes? Is it the mutation leading to variation in alleles this idea is contrary to the experiment by Luria – Delbrück (1943) (also known as the Fluctuation Test) who shows that genetic mutations occur in bacteria in the absence of selection, rather than being a selection response . These facts intrigued and lead me to pursue biological sciences as my major in Graduation as well as in Post Graduation, where I came to understand that there is so much more to phenotypic expressions than the genes could entail, and so much more to phenotype as is subtly hinted by epigenetic. For instance, the differences in case of monozygotic twins, or in the context of rapid environmental change, it may be important to be able to translate phenotypic plasticity into variation that is encoded in the genome, and thus under direct natural selection. There are certain questions which remain to be answered such as how queen and worker honey bees can appear so different despite being genetically identical, how starvation in human populations may affect the health and longevity of the next generation. So I want to know more, as can be said that there is so much to know as can ever be known, so much to achieve as can ever be achieved, and life piled after life does still fall short to understand the intricacies and beauty things appearing ordinary holds.

My major was an interdisciplinary course where we were taught Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry along with different realms of hard core biology starting from Molecular biology, Immunology to Animal Diversity. Further enriching my understanding in the subject, I pursued Post graduation in Biosciences from the same university, Jamia Millia Islammia( QS ranking 750-800), where I was pursuing my graduation. During my Post Graduation I went through the diverse subjects of Biology like genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, computational biology etc. Though it was not enough for me to convey all that I have learnt in few sheets of paper even then I managed to secure more than first division throughout my academic career and I personally believe that a few figure couldn’t gauge my potentiality as I am more than my resume can entail.

Nevertheless, I never backed down from learning the intricacies of experiments and the possibilities a particular scientific endeavour holds. During my Post Graduation I enrolled as a Summer intern under the guidance of Prof.Asis Dutta (Scientist Emeritus and former Vice Chancellor of Jawahar Lal Nehru University, NIPGR, Delhi.) where my project was to increase the shelf life of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) .During my tenure here I was given exposure to various tools of molecular cloning and tissue culture techniques. I was hurled by the momentum I got from this encounter and shooting for every opportunity I could go through I grabbed down a couple of projects in prestigious CSIR labs of my country.

My first venture was a cancer biology lab of CSIR-CDRI, Lucknow,India where I learnt various cell culture techniques, animal handling, intravenous administration of tumour inside the mice and drug efficacy on it along with western blotting techniques. Due to certain upheaval in life I took a break from cacophony and tried to make sense of all the things around.As I believe that only dead fishes go with the flow of life and being alive means taking chances so I took some more interviews and bag down a job of Project Assistant II in CSIR-CIMAP Lucknow,India. It was here where I was given plethora of opportunities working on many models for tissue culture techniques which comprises of inducing variations to them inculcating methods from forward genetics ( such as mutation breeding) to reverse genetics such as conventional molecular cloning tool to recent breakthrough like CRISPR/cas9.

It never cease to awe me that how CRISPR/Cas9 being such a simple tool can attain so much . Apart from being the most simplest tool on genome editing it can be used as a ground breaking tool as it has wide range of implications as Transcriptional activator, repressor, DNA labelling , CHIP. Merging all this in studying genotypic plasticity which instead is a developmental phenomenon, and the response criteria we typically calculate throughout the adult stage or at reproductive maturity are generally the result of positive feedback during the ontogeny of an organism from environments and genes , which still does remains a viable option galvanizing the study of epigenetic itself. We could do so many things in genome of organisms with CRISPR/cas9 pointing to all that things which is termed as “noise” can rather be an orchestered symphony of music ever heard in the history of man kind.

It is my expectation that a position (where?) will be a great learning experience for me to work in this exciting area.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you soon.