Life sciences
This post continues the series of things to learn. The last post covered the physical sciences, this post covers the other branch of science - the life sciences, a.k.a. biology. As usual, standard educational curricula often focus on dry technical details instead of the fundamental concepts which are more interesting to most people (who don’t become biologists or doctors). The education system overall doesn’t distinguish between what’s practical and what isn’t. While I’m personally interested in the all of the topics below, not everyone is. They would still benefit from learning about the topics relevant to their own health and well being, even if they don’t understand the intricacies of photosynthesis or cellular metabolism. Maybe the education system could also place a greater emphasis on encouraging healthy practices as well.
What is life?
What is the basic architecture of a simple sample single-celled organism?
How does life resist entropy internally and maintain order?
Feedback systems: See Book Review: Design Principles of Biological Circuits
How is energy passed from light to plants to animals, and how is it used by cells? (See also my carbon poem)
See also The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell - nice pictures, but also covers the basic concepts well.
DNA and Genes
Expression - How does the genetic message go from DNA to RNA to proteins?
How do things like genetic dominance work at the molecular level?
Reproduction - How does DNA replicate? How does it ensure variation? It's almost paradoxical how much effort life spends to preserve DNA and then also to mix it up.
Multiple swaps happen during meiosis
How are traits inherited? (From Mendelian single-gene traits to more complex multi-gene traits)
Differentiation - How do cells differentiate during fetal development?
Initial impetus based on amount of fluid detected in egg/fetus, which then sets off chain reaction where genes signal to other genes. (Seems almost recursive. How did this process evolve?)
Modern techniques for editing DNA
Older tech to transfer genes from one organism to another
CRISPR - more precise editing, originally used by bacteria
Bigger picture of genetic differences. What does it mean that humans share ~50% of their DNA with a banana or 99.9% of their DNA with each other? How much do people differ from each other? How relevant is the non-coding DNA?
Seems us humans are not really 99.9% the same. Even just in coding DNA, letter differences change whole words and CNVs repeat words.
Practical things can one learn from getting your DNA test
What genes led humans to be so different than e.g. chimpanzees. How a small number of genes can make a large difference in the brain's development. How non-coding DNA affects things.
Evolution
Quantitative evolution - Rates of mutations of DNA of different organisms. How long it takes for an adaptive gene to spread in a population. To what extent can the path of evolution be traced?
The possible origins of the first life
The role of epigenetics
Philosophy of evolution
See Stanford articles on evolutionary genetics and teleological notions in biology
What level evolution occurs at and how animals cooperate (see The Selfish Gene)
Evolutionary psychology - actual evidence vs. speculation. Seems in many areas the brain is general purpose and people can adapt without genetic mutations.
Related: philosophical interpretations of human nature
The brain - this can be split into its own post, so just leave brief questions here
How do thoughts and memories arise from neurons?
How does consciousness work? (Difficult question!)
How did and does the brain develop (evolution, culture, nature, nurture)
What happens to the brain during sleep?
To what extent is the brain hardwired when born vs. a system that learns?
Computational neuroscience
Behavioral neuroscience
The human body and practical health
Digestion and nutrition
What makes a balanced diet?
Metabolism rates and and people's weights. How would skinny people have fared in hungrier times? (See also The Hungry Brain)
Infection and disease
how bacteria and viruses spread
how the layers of the immune system works
how allergies develop and why they're more common now
Exercise
Why it's beneficial
What practices for most benefits?
How muscles strengthen and weaken
Answering health questions - the fundamentals to know + search skills to find answers
Basics one should know to recognize potential health issues
What are useful resources that provide as much helpful info as possible instead of just being as cautious as possible? Perhaps merckmanuals.com. For supplements, see examine.com.
The connection between psychological wellbeing and physical health
Modern world - evaluating the risks that new substances (e.g. Teflon, BPA) may pose to human health
Teeth - how cavities develop and best practices for preventing them
Besides sugar, which foods are most harmful? How long does it take for decaying processes to start occurring?
Can one reduce prevent the mouth from being colonized by harmful bacteria?
Does flossing work in practice? What are alternatives
What other treatments exist (e.g. Silver diammine fluoride)
Sleep - what happens in the body during sleep, best practices for sleep
Big picture topics
Big picture view of evolution (See Big History Course or more poetically, The Goddess of Everything Else)
Numbers in biology (See book.bionumbers.org)
Patterns in biology (See Scale)