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I totally agree with this! I wish we could "play with nature's design" like we can program computers. But alas, our technology is woefully inadequate for the ta

by jostmey 14y ago

I totally agree with this! I wish we could "play with nature's design" like we can program computers. But alas, our technology is woefully inadequate for the task, and our understanding of the natural world is still sadly primitive. What is needed is a generation of people willing to commit themselves to basic science research. Working in basic science is perhaps not as glamorous as working as an entrepreneur, a programmer, or whatever else. But over the course of a lifetime, the work is infinitely more satisfying.

redwood 14y ago
Curious what field and capacity you're working in basic science. I'm considering pivoting out of industry. Studied physics undergrad but quite frankly couldn't cut it to do so post-grad. However I do wonder if another field would be doable for me... but without prereqs I'm not sure how to get onto that path now (I'm not a coder, getting really into bio/chem/neuro/genetics). Been out of uni 6 yrs
- madhadron 14y ago
  You can go into biology with no background. I went from physics and math as an undergrad to a PhD in biology. The first six months were rough, but if you really cut yourself off from your previous field and make yourself understand how the thought process in biology works, you can pick it up fairly quickly. Actually, I suspect that an undergraduate degree in biology might be a liability, since you will have memorized so many things that were simplifications or just outright false. On the other hand, know that the field is incredibly political and that the old joke about the average IQ of both physics and biology going up when Delbruck switched from the former to the latter is true.
  - redwood 14y ago
    Well great to hear you've made a similar transition, and very cool to think that some of the bias coming from traditional lower-level bio training could be looked at as a liability. I wonder if I can somehow find a way to pivot into bio without going through a university. Would love to somehow get there through industry, perhaps through some of the genome sequencing outfits which have some crossover with the semiconductor industry. Hadn't heard the Delbruck joke but hah good to hear, if I understand you correctly, that in a sense it'd be easier to swim in bio if I was sinking in physics.
tempuser007 14y ago
"our understanding of the natural world is still sadly primitive" You are talking for yourself ? For humanity ? For scientists you never met ? I honestly don't know who you are and how well suited are you (you're a specialist in bioengineering ?) to tell us how much "we" know or we don't. I'm just a software engineer with some basic understanding of genetic engineering, but my wife is a genetic technician in a lab, and it's amazing what operations they performed on a daily basis as part of their university classes and recently in research projects in real labs (and this didn't start yesterday or only with my wife's generation). So I'm very tempted to believe that you just woke up speaking about some limitations you don't personally know and it's not even in your area of expertise. This does not mean that today "everything" is possible or that we achieved the grand mastery of DNA. It's just that for the "right people" the understanding of the natural world is more advanced than you have ever dreamed (unless you are one of the "right people").
- tempuser007 14y ago
  and if you down vote, please be generous and explain why you disagree with me.
- refurb 14y ago
  Let me give you the best example I can. Computation chemistry has been going on for decades. Attempts at modeling how molecules behave is still quite primitive. We're talking about modelling the behavior of a object that is comprised of a few dozen atoms. That's it, pretty simple right? We'll the models aren't that good at predicting molecular behavior. Let's move up a step now. Computation chemistry is used heavily by the drug industry. Get an x-ray structure of a protein (maybe a few hundred to a few thousand atoms) and see if it binds to a drug. Wow, now it's getting complicated. How successful is it? Not very. I can remember a computational chemist saying "oh hey, the model say if you replace X with Y, you'll increase binding by 10x". So we try and guess what? The binding was worse. Now we move up to a biological system. Now we have hundreds (if not thousands) of proteins floating in a matrix of water and ions. We have a DNA strands of millions of base pairs, of which maybe 10% we actually know what they do. We also have small signalling molecules that do something we understand, but probably also do 10 other things we have no idea about. It is very impressive how far biological "design" (genomics) has come so far, but right now the tools are incredibly blunt and the analysis is incredibly crude. I have no doubt our understanding will improve immensely over the coming decades, but I would guess we understand less than 1% of what's going on inside of complex living organisms.

by jostmey 14y ago

redwood 14y ago

Curious what field and capacity you're working in basic science. I'm considering pivoting out of industry. Studied physics undergrad but quite frankly couldn't cut it to do so post-grad. However I do wonder if another field would be doable for me... but without prereqs I'm not sure how to get onto that path now (I'm not a coder, getting really into bio/chem/neuro/genetics). Been out of uni 6 yrs

madhadron 14y ago
You can go into biology with no background. I went from physics and math as an undergrad to a PhD in biology. The first six months were rough, but if you really cut yourself off from your previous field and make yourself understand how the thought process in biology works, you can pick it up fairly quickly. Actually, I suspect that an undergraduate degree in biology might be a liability, since you will have memorized so many things that were simplifications or just outright false. On the other hand, know that the field is incredibly political and that the old joke about the average IQ of both physics and biology going up when Delbruck switched from the former to the latter is true.
- redwood 14y ago
  Well great to hear you've made a similar transition, and very cool to think that some of the bias coming from traditional lower-level bio training could be looked at as a liability. I wonder if I can somehow find a way to pivot into bio without going through a university. Would love to somehow get there through industry, perhaps through some of the genome sequencing outfits which have some crossover with the semiconductor industry. Hadn't heard the Delbruck joke but hah good to hear, if I understand you correctly, that in a sense it'd be easier to swim in bio if I was sinking in physics.

tempuser007 14y ago

"our understanding of the natural world is still sadly primitive" You are talking for yourself ? For humanity ? For scientists you never met ? I honestly don't know who you are and how well suited are you (you're a specialist in bioengineering ?) to tell us how much "we" know or we don't. I'm just a software engineer with some basic understanding of genetic engineering, but my wife is a genetic technician in a lab, and it's amazing what operations they performed on a daily basis as part of their university classes and recently in research projects in real labs (and this didn't start yesterday or only with my wife's generation). So I'm very tempted to believe that you just woke up speaking about some limitations you don't personally know and it's not even in your area of expertise. This does not mean that today "everything" is possible or that we achieved the grand mastery of DNA. It's just that for the "right people" the understanding of the natural world is more advanced than you have ever dreamed (unless you are one of the "right people").

tempuser007 14y ago
and if you down vote, please be generous and explain why you disagree with me.
refurb 14y ago
Let me give you the best example I can. Computation chemistry has been going on for decades. Attempts at modeling how molecules behave is still quite primitive. We're talking about modelling the behavior of a object that is comprised of a few dozen atoms. That's it, pretty simple right? We'll the models aren't that good at predicting molecular behavior. Let's move up a step now. Computation chemistry is used heavily by the drug industry. Get an x-ray structure of a protein (maybe a few hundred to a few thousand atoms) and see if it binds to a drug. Wow, now it's getting complicated. How successful is it? Not very. I can remember a computational chemist saying "oh hey, the model say if you replace X with Y, you'll increase binding by 10x". So we try and guess what? The binding was worse. Now we move up to a biological system. Now we have hundreds (if not thousands) of proteins floating in a matrix of water and ions. We have a DNA strands of millions of base pairs, of which maybe 10% we actually know what they do. We also have small signalling molecules that do something we understand, but probably also do 10 other things we have no idea about. It is very impressive how far biological "design" (genomics) has come so far, but right now the tools are incredibly blunt and the analysis is incredibly crude. I have no doubt our understanding will improve immensely over the coming decades, but I would guess we understand less than 1% of what's going on inside of complex living organisms.