I am very glad you're doing this series. I have often been preoccupied by estimating the scale of biology within an order of magnitude because I think it's an interesting way of conveying to people (especially non-biology nerds) what future synthetic biology or ecology might be able to tap into. I think biology will be a key to becoming a Type 1 civilization.
Viroids, although not technically alive, are 300 nt long, so that's like 300 nm, Pando, the aspen grove in Utah, appears to be the largest organism, and that's at least .72 km on a side, so that's like 9 orders of magnitude. But you could also include biomes so maybe biology exists at more than 12 orders of magnitude.
Anyway, I'm interested to see the directions this series goes in.
Thank you for starting this series. I have a master's in chemistry and I am fascinated by the molecular and supramolecular assemblies in biological processes and the scale at which they function. Quite excited for the essays to come!
Love it. When I was at Caltech I took a class by this name too. Was super fun and powerful. Might be an interesting browse if you aren’t familiar. http://bebi101.caltech.edu/2016/
Hi Niko,
I am very glad you're doing this series. I have often been preoccupied by estimating the scale of biology within an order of magnitude because I think it's an interesting way of conveying to people (especially non-biology nerds) what future synthetic biology or ecology might be able to tap into. I think biology will be a key to becoming a Type 1 civilization.
Viroids, although not technically alive, are 300 nt long, so that's like 300 nm, Pando, the aspen grove in Utah, appears to be the largest organism, and that's at least .72 km on a side, so that's like 9 orders of magnitude. But you could also include biomes so maybe biology exists at more than 12 orders of magnitude.
Anyway, I'm interested to see the directions this series goes in.
Thank you for the interesting blog. Is there any reference for humans,average size of a gene, transcription rate and translation rate?
Thank you for starting this series. I have a master's in chemistry and I am fascinated by the molecular and supramolecular assemblies in biological processes and the scale at which they function. Quite excited for the essays to come!
Love it. When I was at Caltech I took a class by this name too. Was super fun and powerful. Might be an interesting browse if you aren’t familiar. http://bebi101.caltech.edu/2016/
I didn't take the course, but I worked in Rob Phillips' lab! Perhaps we overlapped.
Hey hey! Very cool! I did EE with Changhuei Yang from 2014-2019. When were you there?