Julian's Polymath Explorations

[Updated Mar. 2022] Interactomics today bears a certain resemblance to genomics in the  1990s...  Big gaps in knowledge, but an explosively-growing field of great promise. If you're unfamiliar with the terms, genomics is about deciphering the gene sequence of an organism, while interactomics is about describing all the relevant bio-molecules and their web of interactions. A Detective Story Think of a good police-detective story; typically there is a multitude of characters, and an impossible-to-remember number of relationships: A hates B, who loves C, who had a crush on D, who always steers clear of E, who was best friends with A until D arrived... Yes, just like those detective stories, things get very complex with our biological story!  Examples of webs of interactions, familiar to many who took intro biology, are the Krebs cycle for metabolism or the Calvin cycle to fix carbon into sugars in plant photosynthesis. Now, imagine vastly expanding those cyc...

Last updated May 2023 Q: "How is aging a disease?" A: It's a dynamic system that veers away from its homeostasis (normal equilibrium point): hence a form of slow-progressing illness. Labeling it as 'natural' is a surrender to our traditional state of ignorance and powerlessness, which fortunately is beginning to be changed! Aging is "normal" only from the point of view of the "selfish gene", for whom the body is a disposable carrier. Individuals organisms - for whom self-preservation has a different meaning than for genes - have received scant help from evolution... with rare exceptions such as the T. dohrnii jellyfish (which I discuss here )... but now the time has finally arrived for our rational design to remedy some of the cellular flaws that evolution never bothered to correct!   The above is my standard answer to an oft-asked question. The science of aging is by all evidence very misunderstood by the general public.  Hype,...