Biochemistry zooms in on the molecular machinery, like enzymes and metabolic pathways, almost like a map of a city's wiring. Microbiology, for me, is more about handling the living city itself—the microbes—with culture techniques and aseptic labs as our daily tools to keep them pure. But from my fieldwork here, the obvious divide blurs; I've seen traditional fermentation knowledge in our community, which is essentially applied enzymology and metabolism, fail completely if our makeshift lab space isn't aseptic. So my PhD proposal argues you can't really separate them when working with real-world isolates—my cultures keep dying because our generator cuts power, a very un-aseptic reality that changes the metabolism I'm trying to study.
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