'control of gene expression' - motivation letter for phd in molecular biology

Hello everyone! Please help me with my motivation letter. I am applying to the PhD position but I am not perfect in English. Thank you in advance!

Dear XXX,

I am very interested to applying for the PhD position in the XXX and I believe that my academic background is appropriate for the position.

I have obtained the Diploma with honors (Master degree equivalent) in Biology in XXX in September 2006. Right now I am in the process of searching for a suitable doctoral program in the development of biological and medical applications. My best grades by University were in Molecular biology (excellent), Biochemistry (excellent), Higher Mathematics (excellent) and Genetics (excellent). All of them I liked very much and tried to find extra information in addition to primary literature. For training I attended the distance education course of "Molecular Biology 2010" in "Bioengineering" center of XXX from February 2010 to May 2010.

In the period of study, without interrupting, I took a training program "Translator in Professional Communication" in department of Philology of XXX from 2008 to 2011 and received a diploma on the additional qualification of an English interpreter in the direction of biology. I think philological education gave me not only knowledge in English but also contribute to my personal development.

The topic of my diploma was ïApoplastic peroxidases in Triticum aestivum roots: stress-induced activity and gene analysisï. The work was to study the biochemical and molecular biological characteristics of peroxidase genes. In my research I performed gene expression analysis, work with bacterial cells and production and expression of recombinant proteins, work with bioinformatics programs and databases (NCBI, SwissProt, Peroxibase, PlantCare, Vector NTI).

In 2011 I was awarded scholarship of Government of the XXX, XXX and performed 2,5 months laboratory research in XXX of XXX under the supervision of XXX. This short research at XXX taught me how to behave in international laboratory and gave me ability to learn several molecular biological techniques for gene promoter studies: sequencing of promoters using Genome Walking, GFP/GUS fusion, DNAse I footprinting method allowing finding of transcription factor binding sites and regulatory regions in practice. Based on my academic competency, I believe that I have the capability and potential to accomplish the PhD research project.

On my opinion control of gene expression is one of the most (very) existing and perspective theme and I want to develop my knowledge in this area that is why this position interested me. Although I want to contribute to work on gene regulatory networks underlying hematopoiesis and regulatory disturbance leading to leukemia.

I am enclosing my Curriculum Vitae and details of my academic referees. If you require any additional materials of information, I am happy to supply it.

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

Sincerely,

My name

by? in university would probably be better, unless I got you wrong


this sounds kind of shallow and banal. maybe say more about how you tried to gain a deeper understanding of the subjects and explored additional literature?


I would change that to something like "during my studies, in addition to attending classes"


this sounds a bit awkward. you might want to find the official name of your program to make it sound more correct.


think is a way overused word. "believe" or "feel" might be better. also, "knowledge of English" and "contributed".

the part where you describe the work you did sounds great and very impressive, at least to me


"very existing"? i'd say "highly researched" or "important". and you might want to call it something different than a "theme" - a topic, an area of biology, an area of genetics, a problem in genetics etc.

"I will be happy to provide them"

overall, good work! you might want to polish it a few more times, maybe give it to your English tutor or your English-speaking friends to check the grammar once again, because you can't really say you have a diploma of an interpreter and have poor language skills.