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Biology is going from top-down where we have an incredibly complicated system that we need to dissect and reduce down to workable fundamental parts. The additi
by kirse 9y ago
Biology is going from top-down where we have an incredibly complicated system that we need to dissect and reduce down to workable fundamental parts.
The additional problem there is biology (and the underlying physics) is currently in a state where the known-unknowns continue to increase at an exponential rate. Exploration to reduce physical/biological systems into workable parts continue to reveal even further constituent sub-systems, which in turn opens up entire new fields of research and new unknowns to be explored (seemingly ad infinitum).
- daemonk 9y agoYeah agreed. I don't think most people actually understand the level of complexity involved in biology. A cell is literally a bag of molecules where everything inside is just bouncing around. And somehow, things self organize and stuff works and performs functions. And that's just one single cell. My background is in developmental biology, we have some mechanistic answers to how cells organize to maintain tissue polarity, but nothing really concrete.
- visarga 9y agoOne thing I discovered recently is that genes form a 'gene regulatory network' that bears some analogy to neural networks. Genes are like neurons, each with inputs and outputs interconnected in a complex way between them, and the chemical messages they pass around are proteins. So there is a whole 'neural net' inside each cell - this information put cell complexity in perspective for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_regulatory_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_regulatory_network