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This amuses me. When was the last time any major finding turned an entire mature field of study on its head?
by ryanwaggoner 9y ago
This amuses me. When was the last time any major finding turned an entire mature field of study on its head?
- dekhn 9y agoI don't understand. Are you implying this paper is a "major finding"? Many things that happen in biology occur without any real meaning or utility.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoNo, I'm agreeing with you. I think it rare that any mature field these days is "turned on its head". I doubt most of the examples given by other comments would qualify if you dig into them.
- dekhn 9y agoA good example would be induced pluripotent stem cells nobody thought that that can happen but once it was obvious that you just needed a few transcription factors to move cells from state-to-state. Completely trans formed a field that was already mature
- dekhn 9y agoAnother example would be the discovery that the ECM (extracellular matrix) plays a huge role in cellular development. Completely unrecognized until experiments done by Mina Bissel's lab opened up an entirely new field in cellular biology.
- dekhn 9y agoSuperresolution microscopy. It blew through a long-standing limitation- the best resolution was determined by the wavelength of light passing through a lens. That and other recent discoveries in microscopy like light-sheet microscopy have turned microscopy on its head.