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> but there must be so much more we don't know. I was pretty surprised at the amount of biology we don't know (I'm writing software to help geneticists, a rece

• ncmncm 6y ago
  Biology is unusual among sciences in that a five year old can ask questions it can't answer. To get an idea about what life processes are like, you need to read endocrinologists like Robert Sapolski or Robert Lustig. A lot of processes only work because there are so many moving parts each pushing only a little of the way, so that when something is wrong it doesn't all collapse.
  • Balgair 6y ago
    > Biology is unusual among sciences in that a five year old can ask questions it can't answer. You can do this in a lot of fields, but you're right, Bio is one where it's very easy to do. I'm always struck by the 'pathways' side of mol-bio. It's not easy, but many grad students can come up with experiments that will lead to discoveries of new signaling pathways inside a cell. I'm sure someone has done a census of the number of pathways in their particular cell, but for all cells? It must be a gigantic number of proteins that interact. And I'd hedge that we're no where even close to knowing how they all interact