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I should have loved biology

jsomers.net

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Re: I should have loved biology

#41

Post by joshuamcginnis »

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, extracted, sequenced and aligned. I'm planning to have developed my first GMO yeast in the next 90 days.

If you're interested, I also host the EverymanBio Podcast (YouTube & iTunes) where I talk to folks doing incredible work in the biotech / startup / diybio community.

[1] http://everymanbio.com/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/everymanbio/

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamcginnis/

Re: I should have loved biology

#42

Post by fennecfoxen »

klodolph wrote: post #32
postingpals wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries are determined by the market, but no one ever mentions how the market determines it... which is usually some combination of scarcity, quality, and, more realistically, how many connections you have, etc. These things give you bargaining power which you can use to negotiate salaries. (This is all very basic stuff but it's more fleshed out than just saying 'the market determines salary'. The market isn't a mag…

Yes! The market is the name of the system which sets the salary, but the name has no descriptive power. Just like the opening to the article: > I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names…

"The market" is the name of a place where, once upon a time, you would go to buy things, and perhaps sell some things you made; stable and consistent prices would emerge without any particular rules about how prices for things should be set, or any particular enforcers of the price, but by the dynamics of the supply of the good and the demand for the good.

Re: I should have loved biology

#43

Post by bigger_cheese »

Eridrus wrote: post #14
eindiran wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a few problems that result in this sad state of affairs, and unfortunately they are not constrained to biology (eg 'why isn't mathematics taught with wonder?'). 1. Teachers are required to do evaluations, and the way we have settled on doing evaluations is giving students giant, shitty tests. In order to pass these tests, lots of rote memorization is required. 2. Five years of being forced to teach-…

I'm somewhat skeptical of this explanation since I went to a private secondary school in Australia where these pressures did not apply, and had the exact same experience with Biology where what we were taught was to memorize taxonomies that made me abandon the subject as early as possible.

I went to public school in Australia, there was a lot of memorization, I can remember my tests were always big on making us label diagrams (here's a kidney match the words with arrows, now do it for the liver, now do it for the heart) etc. But we also did some experimental stuff in Biology. Which at least was memorable to me.

Aside from the ever present dissections I can remember one notable experiment in year 11 involving Agar-Gel plates, we took swabs from various places around our school (Taps in the bathroom, Classroom door handle, AC Vents etc) and incubated the plates and compared what sort of bacteria was found and whereabouts.

Re: I should have loved biology

#44

Post by geomark »

nneonneo wrote: post #13

This article rings so true to me. My father is a microbiologist - and now, so is my fiancée. I'm very lucky that I get to learn about genetics through osmosis now, and boy, is it ever fascinating! I had a dining-table discussion with my dad the other day where the subject of DNA mismatch repair came up. It turns out that, in E. coli, a very simple & widely studied prokaryote, there's a mechanism called DNA mismatch r…

"I'm very lucky that I get to learn about genetics through osmosis..."

I see what you did there.

But...is the genetics knowledge the solute or the solvent, because, well, you know (teaching biology to my homeschooled kid at the moment and we just did a unit on diffusion and osmosis, so please excuse my current state of mind)

Re: I should have loved biology

#45

Post by jonsno56 »

minhaz23 wrote: post #27

Beside the links provided in the article, does anyone have any other articles, books, courses, lectures, youtubers, key people, papers, journals, interesting links/talks/podcasts/quotes they'd like to share to help others on their journy to understand biology better? Thank you!

In a Nutshell is good (not deep), though you probably already know them

Re: I should have loved biology

#46

Post by dnautics »

postingpals wrote: post #29
pm90 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t salaries determined by the market? Just to be clear, this isn’t snark. I’m curious how salaried are determined.

Salaries are determined by the market, but no one ever mentions how the market determines it... which is usually some combination of scarcity, quality, and, more realistically, how many connections you have, etc. These things give you bargaining power which you can use to negotiate salaries. (This is all very basic stuff but it's more fleshed out than just saying 'the market determines salary'. The market isn't a mag…

it's an oversupply relative to demand:

- lots of washout MDs

- lots of students who wanted to postpone adulthood by getting a PhD (master's are just not respected anymore)

- lots of PhDs who couldn't hack the academic game or got disillusioned by it and are used to low salaries because postdocs exploit the high-stakes attempt to get social cachet of professorships.

- few jobs. Biology is a capital-intensive endeavour, so each dollar of VC can do marginally less.

- it's hard to tell the wheat from the chaff in the labor market (and there's probably a market of lab lemons, too), so a superstar's earning potential is necessarily hamstrung

Re: I should have loved biology

#47

Post by redvenom »

m463 wrote: post #2

I read this and it it fills me with so much melancholy. I took biology 101 in college and what I thought would be really interesting turned out to be SO unexpectedly meaningless. Now years later all I recall is the memorization of phylums and kingdoms on one test and cell structures on another test and sitting in a large auditorium looking at the map and not the territory. The course was so much about WHAT and never…

I'll tell you something about memorizing phyla, orders, families, genera, and species. If you've never had exposure to any of that, it might seem arbitrary. But now, go out in the woods and try and identify species you see. You can start with birds and mammals because they are the easiest.

As you begin to do so, you can keep a record of them in a spreadsheet or notebook. Look up their biological classifications. All of a sudden the classification system will start to make sense, and help you understand the diversity of the organisms around you.

Biology is one of those subjects where part of the context comes from being outdoors and trying to understand ecological relationships yourself. You don't have to get to the level of a pro biologist, but there is so much you can find out by experiencing nature and trying to understand the basics that anyone can do it.

Re: I should have loved biology

#48

Post by axiom92 »

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?

Re: I should have loved biology

#49

Post by _jahh »

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…

this terrifies me, some crazy makes a gene drive super corn pathogen and civilization crashes.

Re: I should have loved biology

#50

Post by redvenom »

friendlybus wrote: post #16
dannykwells wrote: post #6

If you want to study biology, study evolution. Darwin. Dawkins. Gould. King. Biology only makes sense in light of evolution, and boy howdy is it beautiful.

Probably an annoying question... do you have an opinion on the mathetical unlikelyhood of evolution happening?

Well, there are documented cases of evolution happening during our lifetimes.

But I would say as a mathematical process, pretty likely once you have the basic ingredients. Richard Dawkins has written some good popular science books like 'Climbing Mount Improbable' that talks about evolution in this light. His 'Selfish Gene' is also an excellent read. It is slightly more technical but definitely understandable without an immense technical background.

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