Re:Good genes are nice, but joy is better
by biomcgary on Friday November 03, 2023 @08:45PM
(#38136888)
I agree with your perspective, but would add a little nuance. I think the molecularly-mediated version of genetics is promising (e.g., Transcriptome Wide Association Studies, or TWAS). It breaks out of the black box a little, but still enriches for causal associations that purely mechanistic approaches miss. Pure molecular mechanism has a hard time tracing from cells to organismal phenotype at age 60 in a varied environment.
Re:Good genes are nice, but joy is better
by sizzle on Saturday November 04, 2023 @02:38AM
(#38138698)
Do you do computational biology? I think that field is fascinating. I’m working on human biomolecular data viz tools in a consortium of academic labs (Harvard, CMU, etc.) funded by the NIH. Really enjoy working with computational biologist.
I've worked in this field for a while and continuously get into arguments with geneticists, part of that is because I simply don't understand the explanations genetics gives (I'm a molecular biologist and computer scientist; the difference is that genenticists treat genotype to phenotype as a black box, while molecular biologists see it as an event system), but another part of it is that most scientists are highly susceptible to the streelight effect, and genetics is something tangible you can easily measure in the lab, while environment is... much more complicated.