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There are two things you absolutely must understand if you're going into biology as an engineer: 1. Everything, and I mean everything, is stochastic. There is nothing in biology that is a guaranteed "if X then Y," there's nothing in biology that is a guaranteed "X is used for Y," "X is only used for Y," or "only X is used for Y." Even stuff that seems like it _should_ be that way isn't. RNA folds into useful shapes, the codon table varies between organisms, enzymes will target and modify multiple substrates, and metabolic pathways can and will run in both directions depending on the circumstances. Understand this, internalize this. 2. Biology is a physics problem, not an informatics problem. There's no API boundaries between different "layers," because everything is molecules jostling against other molecules. This means things like the geographic distribution of molecules within a cell can and will have serious effects on gene expression and biological processes. What's more, that "no API boundaries" extends to the cellular level - the "cell wall" is a thing cells use both sides of, bacteria regularly swap genes and genetic material, and metabolic pathways will pass between unrelated organisms. Basically, everything we've ever done to turn engineering into a tractable problem does not exist in nature. Nature grabs whatever happens to be right at hand and shoves it into use. Consequently, it is _devilishly_ complicated to model, because every simplifying assumption you want to make has exceptions that stack to "your model works perfectly exactly once on a Tuesday at 3pm, but only if the humidity is over 72%." This is also why you'll notice your lab biologists are the kind of superstitious that would make a pagan soothsayer say "oh come on, it's not _that_ bad." It's an awesome, amazing field, and there's huge contributions you can make as an engineer, but step one is shut the hell up and listen to the scientists, and step two is to learn that every time you hear "X does Y," your next questions should be "under what circumstances?" "how often?" "when doesn't it?" and "what happens then?" |