A short and wondrous introduction to genetics.
(Science Week, day 1!)
On this most Darwin of days…
The celebrated coiner and grasper of evolution by natural selection could not have known about atoms or molecules. Even having died still not much more than a century ago, the term genetics would have sounded like an alien or nonsense word. It almost coils my innards to imagine his wonder at biology's strides over the following hundred years; even to have one reading of Wikipedia's short, simple introduction to genetics, available now to almost everyone on Earth in a heartbeat.
I decided to spend a little time today carefully and quietly reading through it, and that's why I've chosen to share it today.
I still lament not ever having taken biology in high school or college, largely because, while I've spent my life awestrickenly focused on the deepest questions existence raises, I remained somehow unaware that biology had anything in it which could satisfy that part of me. How did I miss that, really? DNA, evolution, the tree of life, and Earth's deep and distant history? Of course, I would eventually gather, there is nearly limitless profound wonder and satisfaction to be found there, and studying and listening to material on the topic has lent me a higher-level intuition about how evolution and genetics basically work. But, in the same way an avid amateur programmer might crave to completely understand exactly how her computer's processor and hard drive work at the level of the transistor or the stored bit, I've never had a clear image of, say, the replication of a gene's dual strands, the interpretation of one by a ribosome for conversion to amino acids, to the folding of proteins, to whatever tasks they might perform in a cell.
That last sentence? I have this morning's reading to thank for my ability to finish it off the cuff. People who have studied biology might find it elementary, and they should. It's truly an introduction written for people who haven't studied genetics at that magnified level and want the gist of it. It succeeds in conveying simply the basics of these complex and alien workings.
It has visual aids, but I unknowingly read only its text, and found my imagination's visual output even better. Those continuous images and their precise implications dawning on me, like the wonders of physics or astronomy, remind me of how a little knowledge, such as no one in Darwin's time had, can change one's outlook on their very life and beyond. That's what science stands by to offer all of us.
See you this week.