bio, biochem, biomed??

Could someone please describe what is the difference between these three as university courses.

Biological sciences is the broadest and typically refers to bot human and plant biology and touches on many topics related to them. Biochem is the study of the chemical processes behind biological functions and is generally a subset of biomed. Biomed is the study of human biology, but its very broad and includes modules like genetics, anatomy, biochem and microbiology. Of course, these are very generalized definitions and depend on the uni.

Reply 2

Jess_Lomas

From my understanding (I'm doing biochemistry and genetics)
Biology is like A level biology
Bio med is biology that takes place in the human body so no plants and ecosystem sort of stuff but still bacteria
Biochemistry is the part where chemistry and biology cross over so mine has lots of proteins and how the bonds form etc. also metabolic reactions is quite common to learn about
I would say it depends on the uni you look at as at Sheffield the biochemistry course has a lot less chemistry than other unis and is more similar to biomed at some
Also biosciences normally have the same first year compulsive moduels so it is quite easy to change after if you want to

Reply 3

cyberhex

Biomed student here. I agree with the other two replies. Biology covers human and plant and ecology etc (like at A-Level). The biochem and biomed first years at my uni have all the same modules (biochem, pharmacology, neuroscience, genetics, anatomy, cell bio, chemistry, physiology), but biochem in second and third year is a lot about chemical reactions, structures and metabolism. Biomed is generally a lot broader and has a lot more options in second and third year, specialising into the subject areas you study the basics of in first year. For instance, I'm going into neuroscience and pharmacology. Biomed is good if you don't currently know what you want to specialise into in terms of lab work, or if you want to do medicine later - around 50% of my year are planning on doing grad medicine.

Reply 4

simxne_

Yeah this is all true and it can definitely vary significantly depending on the university. I am studying biochemistry and there is a lot more chemistry involved in the course than a lot of other biochem courses - in first year, it feels like almost 50% chemistry modules and 50% biology modules. (And just a side note, biochemistry covers all living organisms, not just humans!!*). Although next year (second year) I will have quite a few compulsory biochemistry modules, I will probably be studying a neuroscience module for part of the year, so there are still options!

Edit:*we have covered things on animals (mainly humans I suppose), plants, microorganisms (microorganisms was more biology, rather than biochem though) in first year. But yes, the main animal/plant bio module that other first year biology students do at my uni is not covered for biochemists. Neither is Ecology).

(edited 10 months ago)

Reply 5

ziggy03

Just to add some information to what's already been said - yes biochem and biomed covers biochemical processes as fields of study etc, but its important to notes that for these courses at university you almost exclusively learn about the human body rather than plants or animals.

if you study biology you will learn about plants, animals and humans - much wider range of study but you will go into less detail and deal with broader concepts on muhc larger scales such as ecology (you will also have some biochemistry too but it'll be much less detailed).