Chemicals and Biology: A Love Story

I knew this was coming. After all the shoveling I did during the "Large Snow Event" a week ago, the baggage lugging for our Florida trip, and the help I gave moving Kate's parents into their new house, I knew a back-tastrophy was potentially lurking around the corner. And I was fine until around 2:30 yesterday when an innocent hands-over-the-head stretch snapped something, causing the usual muscular ripple effect, locking up everything in my neck and upper back.

So, like many love stories, this one starts with heartbreak, or at least backache. Thankfully we understand so much about our biology we've been able to develop a huge battery of chemicals tailored toward specific restorative purposes, chemicals we're all come to depend on and...love.

My particular sweethearts right now are Prednisone, a steroidal anti-spasmodic and anti-inflammatory, Flexeril, and muscle-relaxant, and Vicodine, a Hydrocodone and Tylenol based pain-reliever. These three made sweet love to my biological processes yesterday and made it at least possible for me to sleep last night. Today I'm still bound up pretty bad, but the spasming has stopped for the most part. I'm about to take my next dose of Prednisone, followed by a Vicodine/Flexeril cocktail.

Oh, my little chemical menders, how I love thee. Let me count the ways...1 *swallow* - 2 *swallow* - 3 *swallow*....

Being Overly Prepared is a Good Thing

Being overly prepared for something is better than not being prepared enough. I've learned this lesson first-hand when I figured out that all the studying I've been doing for the past week and a half has been real overkill. I was given notes from a friend that went through the subjects like: Social Studies, Economics, Biology, Chemistry, Math, English, Politics, Geology, Writing, and a few more. It comes to find out that the Praxis I I am taking tomorrow morning only consists of writing, reading, and math. And my guess is that all those other subject matters are on the Praxis II, which I also have to take eventually, so really I didn't waste my time, I'm now just ahead of the game. Well, now I'm going to do something relaxing, since I didn't let myself relax like I could have while on vacation. Oh well, I should have read the fine print.

The Progression of Biology

I was just thinking about biologists. None specifically. Biologists as a career path. I was thinking about how their focus has slowly changed over the years. I love the fact that science is a living, evolving practice, shaped both by its own discoveries, and by the environment it functions inside of.

Here's my take on the shifting role of biologists. As a young science, biology was mainly concerned with discovery. Finding and identifying new species, learning about the basic functioning of elaborate ecosystems, and understanding how animals and plants adapt to their surroundings. Biology was all about filling in the holes in our basic understanding of our living world, a science devoted to learning about things because they were there.

Slowly though, as human activities began to adversely affect our planet, a large swath of biologists switched from pure understanding to conservation. How do we save the great biodiversity our planet spent millions of years cooking up? We now needed to understand exactly how our activities impacted our environment, and how we could mitigate some of the damage. Biology matured, and a purpose was tagged onto a search for understanding which was, up until that point, for it's own sake. And this aspect of the science of life has become even more desperate and personal as we've realized how much a part of our ecosystem we are, and how our impact on the planet is beginning to adversely affect us.

While this shift is going on, technology advances. Discoveries are made across many different disciplines which have lasting affects on the practice of science. Biologists, armed with the constantly improving tools genomics provides, are moving slowly from a passive stance, simply studying life as it is, to a much more active mentality, modifying live to certain ends, and eventually creating custom life. That, to me, is a very interesting paradigm shift, because it marks the moment we move from just studying life with technology to life becoming the technology.

That, I think, is where the science of biology is ultimately taking us. A fusion of life and technology. Life as technology and life merged with inorganic technology. The fusing of robotics and computer science with biology. Cyborgs, if you will. Biology enhanced by circuitry and physical technology. And biological computing, using cells and proteins to create computer systems able to grow and evolve. Artificial brains, in a sense. It's a merging of all available technologies to improve human existence.

And it's not selfish. The evolution of the study of biology is ultimately caused by our deep concern for life. At a basic level want to learn about it, know its inner-most functions intimately, and deeply understand processes once unfathomable. When these systems are threatened we move to protect them, also because of our innate concern for life. And the more deeply we understand life, the more we appreciate how important it is to protect it. And once safe, our concern drives us to improve life. To learn new ways to repair it and heal illness. To amplify its natural abilities for positive ends. To fuse all available technologies into its structures, all in an effort to make life on this planet more robust, healthier and more positive for ourselves and our co-inhabitants.

The study of life has become a study of the planet as a whole, our place in it, and how best to continue that existence, in both senses of the phrase.

We Are Tremendous Machines

Last night, for kicks I took the career test Kate took and talked about in a previous post. Just curious to see if I was in the profession best suited to my wiring. The answer is "no", it turns out. The closet career match to my test results was "biologist." Something I'm interested in, for sure, but not something I'd want to make a career out of, I thought.

But then, trying to come up with a blog post for today my mind went to life's natural healing abilities. Huh. Biology. And, looking back at my previous entries, I find that biology is an overarching theme in many of them. So maybe I am in the wrong career. Those tests can be eerily accurate. Kate's top career path was nursing, exactly what she's been waffling around for weeks.

But I digress. Living tissue is pretty astounding. It's ability to heal damaged areas has no analogue anywhere else in the universe. Self-repairing data structures in computing are the closest thing I can think of, and those are ephemeral. The are no other inorganic systems that self-regulate and automatically heal.

But then this is all just an offshoot of life's persistent will to exist. Multi-cellular organisms are just conglomerations of single-celled organisms, each with its on survival mechanisms. The instinctual will to defend themselves against invaders and procreate their species. Those drives to continue existence create in their ecosystem, us, the ability to heal. And interestingly, this holds true on a macro scale. Our planetary ecosystem, a multi-organisular (new word...made it up...tell your friends) creature derives its own healing ability from each of our, and our neighbor species' wills to live and procreate.

Gaia, for lack of a better name, may not have a mind, but she's very much a living entity. Just as we are a cluster of individual life forms, so is she. I think that's a really cool concept. Maybe it should be the topic of my dissertation when I switch careers and go back to school.