Wondering

Recently I haven't been posting much on the blogs.

The reason is that I've been insanely busy lately, with all the course work/labwork and my other activities regarding synthetic biology, something I've been quite taken with past few years. It is amazing how easy it is to learn this new discipline. And the relatively cheap price of the experiments and accessibility of entry level tutorials (of sorts) are added pluses that makes the field of synthetic biology all the more alluring.

I'm actually thinking of starting a synthetic biology DIY group of some kind in NYC, centering around the wonderful database from biobrick foundation and related iGeM projects. I get a feeling that 'hacking life' will be something taught to elementary and middle school students sometime in the near future as the industry matures. Wouldn't it be wondeful? If only my old middle school taught me how to engineer a blue rose I would have been able to actually enjoy the three years of brutal boredom.

Synthetic biology as a discipline is more of an approach to biological engineering, thus innately accessible and interdisciplinary. However, there are still prerequisite knowledge and skills that must be known by heart, like some degree of proficiency in a scripting language like perl or python (and programming mindset, which is apparent in that the beginning of synthetic biology actually came from bunch of traditional hackers), fluid understanding of the tenets of micro/molecular biology, and certain degree of (in)organic chemistry. It might sound like a lot but it's nothing past the level of a decent high school AP class, so most people of adequate education should only need to brush up on their old memories rather than learning something new altogether. Along with violin, synthetic biology is a habit I can see myself committing to ten years in the future, so I'm going into this with long term goals in mind.

... Which means lots and lots of preparation. Sigh. This is something of a problem for me since I'm preparing to submit application to the Rockefeller University graduate course (it almost makes me want to pray to god/or godlike thing(s?)).


The fact that I have too much things I've been thinking about outside my field of expertise doesn't really help matters either. Like the relationship between information, physical state of the universe, and the morphological mechanism possibly linking all of it together (this sounds a little nuts without all the requisite reasoning, but I don't want to go into them at this moment). Or the reconstruction of the origin of life scenario beginning from the concept of biosphere. Since the carbon cycle doesn't quite apply to the biosphere (the Earth, due to lack of any other observable habitable planets), the life-like system at heart has to be a physical phenomena based upon base elementary compounds and electromagnetic radiation, rather than biological. The problem of life-like system in that light should be the problem of material and scale. Is there min/max scale requirement for emergence of life-like systems? All the life-like systems we can observe so far are composed of carbons. Does that mean that only certain type of components can form life-like systems? If so, what is the mathematical and physical property of carbon that makes it the preferred constituent of a life-like system?

I can see the questions inetrlocking with each other and coalescing into something profound at some stage, but how would I get there? I'm doing some complex plasma system modeling and there have been some helpful clues, but none of them are significant enough to provide a lucid answer on it own.

So many questions and curiosities, and I don't know how to answer any of them. I think there is an underlying basis linking all the questions into one whole, but I don't know if it's true or a mistake borne of inexperienced mind......... Sometime I even fear that I'm questioning something beyond my personal ability to answer, like a Greek philosopher in helpless reverie about the origin of the universe.

At least this beats boredom, huh?