I should have loved biology
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I should have loved biology
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Re: I should have loved biology
#2the source code containing within it all of the instructions required for life on Earth.
I would disagree, we see the object code. If we had the source, with comments, genetic engineering would be much easier
Re: I should have loved biology
#3I did my undergrad in electrical and computer engineering. My career has been focused on software. Yet, all through high school and into university, I took biology courses. I did my masters in medical imaging. I wrote the MCAT.
I’ve always loved biology. The intricacy of the systems, and how they work together is so fascinating and really presses the same buttons as computing.
Re: I should have loved biology
#4the source code containing within it all of the instructions required for life on Earth. I would disagree, we see the object code. If we had the source, with comments, genetic engineering would be much easier
It doesn't really make sense to talk about DNA as source code vs object code vs whatever.
Biology doesn't have the same clean levels of abstraction that we've developed in computer science. DNA functionally operates at many levels. It long term storage, local working storage, and it is used to compute. It's a single molecule that does everything.
Then you have to throw in all the secondary processes that modulate and regulate DNA replication, transcription, as well as activation/deactivation.
While it can be useful to lean on the abstractions we've developed to try to understand what DNA is doing those abstractions can only be taken so far.
Re: I should have loved biology
#5I think this is not a biology-only phenomenon. I have the impression that chemistry and mathematics are also not taught well in many (if not most) high schools. Physics education in contrast seems to be in better shape.
Re: I should have loved biology
#6For most of us, these great awakenings come with age. They are rich, sublime flashes of clarity and intellect to be enjoyed (first and foremost) and nourished (thereafter) with more such awakenings. The simplest of deductions lead us to wonder how, what, and if. This is the tunnel through which some people end up believing, through disbelief and astonishment, that there is a grand design at play and that it is a thing of beauty and wonder.
Re: I should have loved biology
#7the source code containing within it all of the instructions required for life on Earth. I would disagree, we see the object code. If we had the source, with comments, genetic engineering would be much easier
embryology made me realize that there's also an inherited context in how genes control development, IIRC the womb triggers some key structural changes in the very first days.
Re: I should have loved biology
#8There is a large gap between the mechanisms of chemistry and the magic of biology that most people do not see closed until late in their education. It's a real shame that this gap cannot be closed sooner.
In undergrad I took a bunch of biology and chemistry classes. It wasn't until I took Biochemistry (a senior level class) that everything came together. The biochemistry class I took was a re-telling of all the stories you learned in molecular biology but with the tools you acquire in organic chemistry.
Equipped with those tools I relearned the Krebs cycle and photosynthesis as real chemical reactions that make sense rather than a chain of facts to be memorized.
The class left me with a deep and profound reverence for life. Every process in a cell has a mechanism that can understood with chemistry. However, the magic of life exists where those processes come together and interact in incredibly complicated ways.
It's seductive to think that we should be able to tease apart this complicated processes and figure out how "life" works, and maybe someday we will. However, it's easy to underestimate the level of complexity and interconnectedness in these systems.
Many of us understand how hard it can be to debug a distributed system. Imagine trying to reverse engineer a distributed system with tens of thousands of interconnected services and messaging queues that all just sort of evolved and were not built with clean engineering practices.
Re: I should have loved biology
#9There are additional factors that make molecules in cells not subject to pure diffusion rules. Charge depending on the pH of the area ( even if in such a crowded space it is likely not really a pH anymore), and molecular interactions. Proteins (and virtually any other molecules but proteins and to a lesser extent nucleic acids are particularly good at that) can stick or be repulsed by their overall composition (external charges, hydrophobicity) but they can also stick to each other. Biology is fascinating but you can't isolate it long from chemistry and physics if you want to understand it.
Re: I should have loved biology
#10yes, biology education in schools are terrible. remembering so many things actually is important, students keep reminding new thing even they in master degree...but the fun of science do not show in text book.