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Science generates more questions than answers. Has this led to a net increase in human ignorance ?
Ignorance is necessary for the existence of knowledge. Every good research paper ends up pointing to a number of unknowns. Given that a 'Journal of Complete Knowledge' does not exist, a walk in the space of unknown is both interesting and intriguing. We do not yet understand how information evolves from a molecule to phenotype.The Laws of Inheritance were not designed to explain layers below that of the phenotype. Do laws of network complexity exist ? Is it possible to build a periodic table in biology ? We do not know. The past decade has seen a major shift from low‐throughput to high‐throughput data generation technologies. Biology has morphed from data‐poor to a data‐rich science. Thousands of protein structures have been experimentally determined and thousands of organisms sequenced. A theory in biology is still missing. Using Systems Biology approach, one hopes to understand how molecular connectivity patterns lead to higher order behaviors. Using Synthetic Biology approach, the hope is to rationally design and construct organisms towards novel applications. Our lab is currently focused on making novel biomolecules from non-protein coding regions of the genome. Our initial experience of 'reusing existing DNA sequences', has led to very interesting and unexpected results. I guess it's time to revisit the classic question ... what makes a gene? On a self critical note... even after accomplishing all these goals (before the outgoing breath decides not to return) probably finding an 'equilibrium constant of mind' would still be a big challenge! Given that >96% of universe and >99% of atom is space - it is unclear why 'nothingness' shows a relative increase from the 'infinite universe to a tiny atom' ? Furthermore, as DNA, RNA and protein can be chemically synthesized : we do not know how our 'life-giving-substance' look like? What is the composition of soul? Does universe run on a fixed soul budget or do brand new souls get cooked into physical existence every moment? From fundamental biology to applications, I have only questions ... no answers yet |
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