Stats for nerds
4recommend
11mentions
9people
2012–2025years
36% recommend64% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- These discoveries are old enough to be in the textbooks already.
Not sure what would be good popular science books. There is quite a lot on the immune system in the Alberts (Molecular Biology of the Cell), but that is maybe too much without solid biology background knowledge. The typical textbook is the Janeway (Immunology), but that's certainly too much.
What I liked as an introductory textbook in general was Campbell Biology, but that covers essentially all of Biology. There is a chapter on the immune system as well.
All those books are horribly expensive in the US, and still quite expensive in other countries, though.
- I'm in a similar boat. I have a bachelors in computer science, 13 years in industry, and I'm fascinated by biology.
The other comments are very good, so I'll add things I didn't see mentioned:
* In my opinion, you have to get beyond the wow factor and figure out what you want to work on and why, rather than the how (e.g. CRISPR). I spent half a year researching this and my result was an interest in heart disease [1].
* Credentialism in biology is high, as mentioned. I'm currently in an M.S. in General Biology program. I was able to get my work to shift me to part time (20 hours/week) and I found a non-thesis M.S. program which is geared towards part time professionals (a rare program format) which is perfect for me. However, another comment mentioned biochemistry rather than general biology and there is some merit to that point, although I've appreciated the broader perspective of a general program.
* If you take the Biology credential path of M.S. or PhD, unless you go the Bioinformatics route, you'll likely need to take the GRE Biology specialty test, which was quite difficult for me with almost no biology background. It took me about 6 months to teach myself [2]. I liked the textbook "Campbell Biology" by Urry et al. as well as others, although I find the lack of citations in textbooks really annoying for the way I learn (following rabbit holes).
* Personally, I'm trying to avoid the bioinformatics route because I don't want to just be a tool of some other scientist, but I want to be a scientist myself. This is a hard path and there is some merit to others' comments about joining a biotech startup as a programmer and then transitioning to deeper biology.
* In my networking, I see a lot of people going the other way: from biology to computer/data science. Anecdotally, this seems to be largely due to points others raised: lower salary, a glut of PhDs, slow growth and conservatism of the field due to regulation, etc.
I don't know where I'll end up exactly, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I think you should scratch your itch if you can. Feel free to email me (email in profile) with questions.
[1] https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra...
- Campbell biology
- I would recommend "Campbell Biology". This book is usually used for olympiad preparation. But, you may check it out first.
- Really? So like, say, Campbell Biology? That's what I've seen used in high school and colleges, and I don't recall any mention of epigenetics in it. (At least in the 7th edition one, published 2004... not sure how much it's changed since.)
- Yeah you're looking at the wrong book. That's copyrighted 2019, not 2004. And not sure what "7e" means (doesn't seem to be the same as "7th edition") but it's Campbell Essential Biology, not Campbell Biology.
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