Exactly! They only had the most basic tools (even primitive by today's standards!) at their disposal and were still able to discover the most profound and fascinating things about life at the molecular level. All that using only a few simple techniques and a pure deductive logic.
It never ceases to amaze me how much hacker spirit these people had.
It took many years for me to reconcile my hacker approach to life with the reality of scientific funding and the rate of progress in human diseases.
Switching gears was the best decision of my life. I've never had so much fun as I had while attending the introductory lectures in cell or molecular biology. So many mind-blowing things I never would've imagine...
Now I'm hoping to get into a PhD programme in genetics. Can't wait to learn about other amazing stuff waiting out there. :)
Perhaps the grass is always greener, but I have strong words about what is wrong with science, and if you want to know, feel free to contact me.
Well, I have to admit that, after spending the last three years as a basically full-time intern in our lab, I have a bit of an idea how science is quite broken. I've witnessed some of its problems first hand.
But I still want to do this, nevertheless. The area that I'd like to focus on during my PhD (genomics/computational biology) is something I really believe I'll have fun doing. On the other hand, it should still allow me to use much of the stuff I'll learn there outside science (if it ever comes to this).
I'll definitely drop you a line later, I'd like to hear your thoughts about this.
And brutal amounts of tedious, flawless precision (I have tremendous respect for people who can do this stuff...)
Seriously, though, my wife used to work with alternative RNA bases. Localizing them to specific sequences required the most massive sequencing gels I've seen (at least 1m tall), and every surface in the lab had to be continually rinsed with dilute acid. It turns out, human skin contains bucket-loads of non-specific RNAses. Not a problem for most people who work with DNA, but can absolutely ruin a week or more's worth of work if you're in an RNA lab.
That's why you have to be so careful: life tries very hard to keep the wrong RNAs out.
It's also worth noting that Sanger's sequencing method, or variations on it, were still used decades later to produce the bulk of the human genome sequence. Only very recently have newer, faster, alternative methods been developed. Even so, Sanger sequencing is still used for smaller scale studies, and is simple enough that almost any modern biology lab can do it on their own (all you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals).