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I cannot disagree more here. Biology is just astoundingly complicated, especially micro-bio. Lets look at the 'Central Dogma' of biology as a point to focus on a bit. It's the idea of 'information' transfer. DNA gets decoded into RNA which then gets decoded into Protiens, right? Easy peasy little discussion. You go into how DNA works a bit, it's structure, it's functions. Then you go a bit more into RNA and the various sub types, how the decoding proteins work, Slicer and Dicer, etc. You then talk about how three letter codons work to make amino acids, how you transport the mRNA out of the nucleus, etc. At each step you take a look at how the thing works and you mention some other launching off points for more research if the kids are interested. This is how a lot of education works, things like cooking, math, history, etc. Except nearly none of what I just said about the 'Central Dogma' is considered true anymore. Sure, some of it is, but the vast majority of how proteins get made is not encompassed in it. Nearly the entirety of modern micro-biology is all about the 'exceptions' to the 'Central Dogma'. So much so that you can't really even say that there is any appreciable difference between RNA and proteins anymore. Every week, and I am not joking here, there is at least one new paper detailing some hybrid mess of RNA and proteins that has critical importance in how we understand how even the most common parts of a cell works. It's to the point that I would not call the 'Central Dogma' and outright lie, but more of a useful fiction. Like saying that a 'for loop' is how the internet works. Yes, there are 'for loops' in the internet, yes they are critical, yes, you need to learn about them. But no, you cannot teach someone about the internet via a fascinating example or two about 'for loops'. Understanding biology is Hard, it is the end result of 4+ billion years of literal life and death. It is not something that can be done in a few examples. Even an understanding at a 12 grade level does in fact take a full school year to get to, and even then, it's just the barest launching point into the wider field. The OP s wrong. Full Stop. You do need to learn the names of these things, you do need to get down and do the work of learning all the facts, you do need to fill your brain with these things that are going to affect you as the world gets more and more complicated, you do need to connect this incredibly vast amount of information together. It is going to affect you or the ones you love. Edutaiment is not the way forward here. Hard work is. |
My own research centered on one subset of functions within E. coli. I was lucky that I found a carefully engineered subset of plasmids and adaptions of E.coli, that could be mathematically modelled [2] [3]. I didn't have to know the whole functioning of E. coli. I didn't have to use mathematics beyond algebra. That is, no calculus was needed. The key task was to put together the quantitative research of about half a dozen labs. Okay, I had a "mountain" of articles to read. And it took 5 years of effort. But it was only doable, because I was modelling a carefully constrained subset of cellular functions.
[1] https://jsomers.net/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8078069/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425810/