New posting! A more whimsical one this time: students reach molecular biology from a variety of sources, but what if we started them off from it instead? What if we went from universality to diversity, instead of the other way around?👇
https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com/2026/06/30/terms-of-empowerment/
@TIR_scienceblog that's an interesting idea. I wonder though: if we start with the fundamentals, it's too far a journey (DNA->RNA->protein, proteins are e.g. enzymes that do something interesting) before there's something tangible? In physics, you learn about a waveform and then you can be at an oscilloscope hearing sounds a few minutes later. Same with chemistry, the destination is only one step (not a whole term of lectures) away.
@steveroyle - agreed, the fundamental concepts would be a really fun theoretical module, but doing practical experiments would be quite a jump. Mind you, I like the idea of young school children learning how DNA base pairing works (you'd see that you can't pair G-A) and you could even make large tRNAs perhaps to start on the triplet code... The main point though is that chemists and physicists get empowered early, whereas biologists get empowered late, prompting the question of what might happen if you tried to empower biologists early... 🙂
