Virology

I too have this question OP.
What's your favorite virus? I love Hepadna and Pox.

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>>9009227
Ebola-chan

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>>9009008
>>9009227
Depending on the University, you might be able to enter a "Immunology and Infection" type program. The attached photo is the course listing from my University of such a program.

It might be confusing so I will make another post with a mock schedule and more details.

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>>9009008
minor experience, tried to isolate viruses in undergrad, very difficult due to their size and limitations of my school's hardware. also the fact they wouldnt let me us cesium chloride or chloroform.

biochemistry/molecular biology degree, obviously take virology, immunology is important, along with molecular bio, cellular bio, microbio. Embryology would help as well, as many viruses affect development (look into influenza potentially having links to schizophrenia, for instance).

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>>9009269
Basically, you will start your degree taking "general" science courses. Pretty much all science degrees of this type have an identical or near identical first year. Worthy of note: you can often take these classes for transfer credit at smaller, local colleges for cheaper (plus smaller class sizes).

So, Year 1 is just general stuff that sets you up for Year 2 prerequisites.
Year 2 you take prerequisites for more advanced classes
Year 3 Advanced classes
Year 4 More advanced classes.

You can see in the picture that there are classes called MMI. That stands for Medical Microbiology and Immunology. In the immunology/approved option part there is a class called MMI 415. That class is called "Advanced Viral Pathogenesis". That is probably something that is of interest to you.

If you don't mind sharing, please post the website of the school that you are interested in going to. I'll do some research and help you understand what your options are. Also consider linking a local college so I can see if they offer transfer credit.

Listen up little viro-bro, virology is the fucking shit, you have good instincts for wanting to go into the field but you need to work hard to get the skills necessary to not be some mid-tier HIV virologist.

Don't worry about specialising in virology until year 3-4 of your undergrad, just make sure you set yourself up to succeed once you're in the upper level courses. What you need to focus on is the fundamentals, and be really fucking good at them because these are the skills you'll need to kick virus ass.

1. Molecular Biology / Genetics is your foundation. Major in this. Genetics will teach you hard-scientific rigour and a huge chunk of the field owes its foundations to early virology researchers. Not only will you learn the relationship between life and information, you'll learn how to understand and manipulate that information in a meaningful way to study viruses.

2. There are three auxiliary fields you'll need to study to round yourself out and succeed later on. If you don't learn them early on, you'll suffer later on when you need them.

A) Virology / Human Microbiology / Immunology: Pretty fucking obvious. What you really want is something about Viral-Host interactions or Pathogenesis.
Learn to understand the immune system very since this is the natural host for viruses. Microbiology is good since it's very similar to virology and you'll learn about other types of pathogens which will teach you a more general view of host-pathogen interactions.

>>9009387

B) Computer Science / Applied Math: This is the single most important skill which won't be available in most normal biology programs. You MUST learn to program, work with the command line and be able to manipulate large (terabyte sized) datasets. If you have these skills, people will want you in their labs. There are many shitty bioinformaticians who learn to do this shit, but they don't know shit about biology and just do what they're told like some sad engineers instead of true scientists. You need to learn this shit so that you can talk intelligently with the bioinformaticians and tell them what to do. Learn to do as much as you can by yourself here since they'll probably fuck it up anyways. Don't get suckered into majoring in this shit, there's way too much biology to learn and you'll end up a drone like the rest of them. Learn Python, R and bash scripting (sed / awk / grep etc...).
Include at least second year statistics here because that shit is also useful.

C) Biochemistry. Biochemists are the old-school bioinformaticians. Really useful shit. Learn biochemistry like you do programming, it's a craft. You need practice and you need to learn how these systems work because you'll be applying them in the lab all the time. Find a 'Structural Biochemistry' course, figure out what the pre-reqs are and aim for that. Structural biochemists have a good, no bullshit approach to things and it will help you understand proteins.

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>>9009308
>University of Alberta
>Canadian University

Brainlet!

>>9009390

Most importantly...

3. Get your ass in a lab as soon as possible. Undergrad science education is a complete waste of time if you don't actually do any science. Don't be super picky with your first job (I worked in a Drosophila Lab), you're there to learn the foundations, and try some science. It's fucking hard, you're going to fail a lot but that's what you signed up for, deal with it.
Make sure you're going to be exposed to real science though, don't be some bitch who just washes glassware and leaves, you should be in the lab meetings, talk to the students and help them with their work in some capacity. If you have computer programming skills, that will 100% help you land a gig since people always want someone who knows this shit.
Once you have a year of experience, if you're not a complete retard, you'll be able to get into almost any lab you want. Just be persistent and show them you're serious about research and virology. Make time to talk to the virology professors 1 on 1 and *Ask them about the best way to become a virologist*. Don't ask them for a job, ask for advice. It's less awkward if they don't have money to hire you and professors appreciate someone who is genuinely interested in research and not just some premed-fag. Read a few of their research papers before talking to them as well so you look like you give a shit. Do your best, even if you don't understand all of it, learn and do your best. This will show you're not just there wasting there time.

Finally, don't worry about grades, Your grade is an objective measure of how well you're learning. Don't bitch about marks to your Professor or TA, they don't give a shit (and it's not their fault) that you're a dumbass if you do badly. Some of the best professors will be bad teachers but it's not their job to spoon feed you. Learn what they think is important and study that, even if it's on your own.

>>9009008
MD-PhD if you got the aptitude. Same possibilities to do research as PhD in life sciences, but it's financially more secure. You can supplement the researcher's small shitty salary by doing physician gigs on the side. And if your research doesn't get any funding or you lose interest, you can work full-time as a doctor.

>>9009269
I wouldn't bother with specialised programs at the undergrad level. Learn the fundamentals well and in the most generalised terms possible, then worry about the specifics. You don't want to only learn about human physiology because that's how only one system works, you should learn how biology works in general.

>>9009406
MD-PhD is a cop-out and 95% of them end up doing shitty derivative research which gets funded only because they have access to primary patient samples. If your goal is to become a scientist MD-PhD is retarded, it takes way too long dealing with treating runny noses and that's all time you're not being a better scientist.

For watered down scientists, DVM-PhD is arguably better for virology because you can then do full on animal experiments and there's a royal fuck ton of money in agricultural virology.

>>9009413
>MD-PhD is a cop-out and 95% of them end up doing shitty derivative research which gets funded only because they have access to primary patient samples.

yes.

>>9009008
Structural biology, protein science, biochemistry.

I consult in Biotech, there's a lot of demand for viral purification building up. Some chemical engineering courses are a useful supplement.

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>>9009399
Fuk u bich basterd #107th overall in wolrd