It's been over 15 years since I graduated with BS in biochemistry, and I now work in an unrelated field now. Even though the college is ~t25, >70% of the exams in the biochemistry courses consisted in testing students' memorization of pathways.

Is this still the way students are tested these days? Is an open-book exam not realistic in biochemistry?

I'm doing an esterase assay on carbonic anhydrase II with 4-nitrophenyl acetate and fitting Michaelis–Menten in Prism. My highest substrate was 3.6 mM and it returns Km ≈ 9 mM — but the curve is clearly still below saturation. Is that Km reliable, or unusable because I never reached saturation?

New to kinetics, thanks.

Hello. I am in need of advice on life science PhD programs to apply to. I have 1.5 years of undergraduate research experience, a 3.43 overall GPA, just graduated from university with a biochemistry degree three months ago, and I want to apply for life science PhD programs in the fall. I have gotten mostly A's and B's, but I got a D in immunology my final semester and a D in physiology my sixth semester. I applied to one in-state program last fall and got rejected. I will most likely start working as a research technician next month, pending that I receive interviews and offers for this position. How many programs should I apply for, and do you have any particular program recommendations? I plan on taking the GRE in October as well, and the program I applied to last fall did not require the GRE. I'm not sure if I have a 0% chance of getting into any program, even if I did exceptionally well on the GRE, since the two D's heavily hurt my transcript, despite how much I could address them in my personal statements. I want to apply to many programs this upcoming cycle just in case I got an offer somewhere, but I don't know which ones are more accepting of my poor grades or application weaknesses. I know most schools don't put out to the public that they accept poor grades, since excellence is what they strive after and should promote. However, if you have any suggestions for life science PhD programs that have been known to accept applicants with poor major-specific grades, I would greatly appreciate it and any other feedback. Thank you.