One example, we're discovering thousands of new proteins in human cells because we collectively assumed short protein chains wouldn't fold into anything functio

One example, we're discovering thousands of new proteins in human cells because we collectively assumed short protein chains wouldn't fold into anything functional: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/11/new-proteins-in-new-ways https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/11/ne... "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell", right? So it's supposed to be in a cell, right? Well, mitochondria seem to just hang out in blood, running just fine. Nobody knows why. There is even evidence they move between cells: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/03/free-floating-mitochondria https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/03/fr... The cell is packed full of different species of RNA. We keep discovering new types of RNA, performing various unknown signaling tasks: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/10/03/enter-glycornas https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/10/03/en... As always, we don't know what we don't know. At the high school level, the textbooks will present a complete, sensible model of cell biology, because a textbook that lists off a thousand molecules each labeled with "Not sure what this does" would not be a very emotionally satisfying textbook. The more I learn about biology, the more scared I am of taking drugs. The wikipedia article on any given drug will tell you it bonds to receptor so-and-so and produces effect A and side effect B etc etc. Well sure, it does that, but it's not like it's a guided missile. The molecule ghosts through the cell membrane and rattles through the metabolic machinery, bouncing off transcription proteins, sticking and unsticking, until a few million out of the untold sextillion you ingested manage to find the target and bond. (Temporarily! All human drugs must not bind too tightly, or else they disable that receptor, and you die) I have mild seasonal allergies. When the complaints from my coworkers about my persistent cough get loud enough, I take a Loratadine pill from the bottle on my desk, and fifteen minutes later, they go away. How on Earth does it do that? The immune system is a vast, poorly understood, constantly introspective machine. After a billion years of cellular warfare it has defenses on defenses on defenses all made specifically to not be disabled. And yet Loratadine reaches through the ranks of spinning buzzsaws and turns it off like flicking a switch. How? And, why? It shuts off just the seasonal allergies. Why do I have a specific cellular pathway that makes me cough occasionally when I inhale pollen? It's certainly not disabling the entire immune system, or I would be rapidly eaten from the inside out by my gut bacteria, or the thousands of fungal species coating my skin and mucus membranes. Just the pollen receptors. It boggles the mind.