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I should have loved biology

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Re: I should have loved biology

#101

Post by adrianN »

friendlybus wrote: post #94
adrianN wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can evolution not happen in a system where you have random mutation and some selection pressure?

Oh, well the 'current' argument is that it's unlikely for a bunch of reasons. - cambrian explosion of life is seen as unlikely given that changing random genes or dna mutations has such a low success rate in generating new life, that an explosion of life happening all at once seems out of step with the math. - we don't know how to create life at all. adding up bits and pieces of molecules into cells and onwards can b…

Ah so you mean the mathematical unlikeliness that evolution brought forth the complexity we see today, not that evolution happens at all. That makes more sense. I think it's hard to come up with solid arguments either way, because we only have a poor understanding of genetics and hence we can only give very rough estimates on the amount of complexity needed, and how much can be introduced in a given unit of time.

I'm not very well versed on that topic, but as for speciation, that happens very easily. For example even relatively short term separation of populations can stop interbreedability, e.g. by changing mating behavior. Once that happens it's just a matter of a few million years of random walks to grow feathers where there has once been fur.

Re: I should have loved biology

#102

Post by loosetypes »

achenatx wrote: post #74

I have microbiology and electrical engineering degrees. Started a PhD (microbiology and immunology) and washed out with a masters to go into the dot com boom. There is so much potential for biology to be engineering, but the reality is you can spend your whole life studying one tiny aspect of something esoteric. You can spend your whole life trying to find one amazing cure (or not). Biology is great if you are intere…

> One great thing about biology is that it is easy to understand because everything makes sense and "works" like you think it should. Human created systems often times dont make sense at all.

Interesting. I tend to view it as the opposite.

Someone else’s system might not be created using the abstractions I would have chosen but with enough head scratching you can generally at least surmise causality. And with computer systems, you can test and re-run until there’s a grain of certainty.

With biology there’s so many independent moving pieces that it feels, to me, like our explanations of molecular and cellular processes are almost certainly lacking an encompassing view. And using them to explain macro biological phenomenon borders astrology. Sure our, experiments tell us something but we interpret results as rules while neglecting the wider context. I don’t want to project onto others but I don’t think my brain is equipped to understand the emergent processes at that scope of nested, interdependent, hierarchies. If you thought object-oriented programming was bad!...

Re: I should have loved biology

#103

Post by hnmm23 »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #89
neitherboosh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful to hear it’s had such a positive impact on your life. What part of the experience made you decide to learn about genetic engineering?

By serendipity, I discovered a few YouTubers around that time who were showing how to do synthetic biology and biotech step-by-step on the cheap. After the trip, it dawned on me that perhaps I should put my intellectual abilities to work in this new field as it might bring the connection to life and meaning that I've struggled to find in tech.

Are those youtubers, or their content still around?

Re: I should have loved biology

#104

Post by the_only_law »

acomjean wrote: post #57
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #17

Ah yes, the recurring obsession hacker news has with biology - except that no startup would pay a biologist a software engineer's wage. Talking about biology is nice. But what's nicer is dismantling the elephant in the room.

bioinformatics (mixing computation and biology) is a profession that is well paid. I'm have a comp-sci background and I work with computers in academia. The pay may not be as high as straight engineering but is good enough to cause some grumblings.

I remember reading about bioinformatics as a teenager and thinking it was the best option in the world,a career combining a number of my interests! For a little while I was semi interested in looking at that after HS, but I had a bit of trouble finding out exactly what was involved in day to day work and it wasn't exactly something big in hobbyist circles.

Of course, things didn't work out that way, I never ended up going to college, or ever really thinking about any science again until the last year or two.

Re: I should have loved biology

#105

Post by hnmm23 »

koeng wrote: post #64
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

It is awesome that you're getting started in this community! Here are just a few very biased recommendations of interesting folks for your podcast: There are a bunch of different cliches (community bio vs biohacking vs citizen bio vs grinders vs transhumanists are all VERY different), but I'd recommend checking out a few of the conferences. iGEM is going on right now which is super cool, and BioHTP and Biosummit are…

if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as:

understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues, medication and their mechanism of actions, and just a whole host of other stuff

basically i want to learn how to help people i know who suffer from multiple autoimmune diseases and the mental health/daily life and fertility struggles associated with them,

where should i go?

thank you!

Re: I should have loved biology

#106

Post by hnmm23 »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

i asked this elsehwere in the thread, and if you scroll lower you'll see why i want to learn but this is going to sound like a bit of a ramble as im tired and feeling passionate and emotional right now but bear with me...

..if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as:

understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues, medication and their mechanism of actions, and just a whole host of other stuff

basically i want to learn how to help people i know who suffer from multiple autoimmune diseases and the mental health/daily life and fertility struggles associated with them,

where should i go?

thank you!

Re: I should have loved biology

#107

Post by adfm »

axiom92 wrote: post #48
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

>life-changing psychedelic trip Fascinating stuff. Any chance you could expand on this?

DNA[1] and PCR[2] were both realized while under the influence of LSD.

[1]: https://maps.org/research/psilo-lsd/lsd-news-timeline/2054-n...

[2]: https://boomcalifornia.org/2015/11/12/on-pcr-lsd-and-science...

Re: I should have loved biology

#108

Post by ericmcer »

stef25 wrote: post #100
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was depressed, yes. But 7g wasn't my first experience with psilocybin. I was just saying that generally, I would not recommend 7g for newcomers. As for being irresponsible, I don't know man. I grew a Schedule 1 drug and then consumed it on my own terms in a way that affected no one but myself in a positive manner. There were risks involved, but when weighed against how I felt at the time, I took the chance.

Didn't mean to criticize. I've tripped on mushrooms, I get it. It's just ... 7g, holy crap :)

It’s hard to quantify how strong based purely on dose size, but yeah 7g is double what I would consider a strong dose. I did that amount once in high school and I didn’t touch them again for several years haha.

Re: I should have loved biology

#109

Post by dnautics »

kortilla wrote: post #55
dnautics wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what superpowers does mastering those languages unlock? Maybe think of it this way: it isn't unlocking the superpowers, it's an ultrafilter. If you aren't capable of performing precise and contextualized recall of trivia, then your engagement with the subject is going to be limited to diletanttery. When I was a biochemist, there were several critical instances when recall of some minor thing that I had learned year…

House was effective because the writers made him that way. The real top people in fields are not walking encyclopedias. They have extremely good grasps of core principles, key findings, relationships between ideas, etc. Specific names and other specifics that don’t fundamentally affect things are not things they clutter their minds with.

If you don't have committed to memory and immediate recall that "aspartic acid" is a negatively charged amino acid, that has dramatically different chemical properties than cysteine, you won't notice something strange is going on when hundreds of amino acids go by your eyes in a BLAST alignment, that you did offhandedly one day:

https://bmcbiochem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2...

That's an easy example. Another one: knowing the atomic mass of nickel in a mass spectrogram and explaining a deviation in a MS fragmentation pattern instead of throwing out the data. Another one: Knowing the mechanism of chen-mapp phosphorylation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7184505_33-Rearrang... and rescuing an otherwise lost synthesis in a group meeting (not published; the downstream results were not otherwise interesting).

Don't discount having raw knowledge at your fingertips.

Re: I should have loved biology

#110

Post by kingjacob »

hnmm23 wrote: post #106
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

i asked this elsehwere in the thread, and if you scroll lower you'll see why i want to learn but this is going to sound like a bit of a ramble as im tired and feeling passionate and emotional right now but bear with me... ..if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as: understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues…

A good place to start would be to see if there's anything on NCBI Bookshelf, and then search pubmed for recent review articles. And then you can drill down further using their citations.
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