Thanks for the enlightening reply! It definitely helps to understand what is going on in the mind of a biologist when they encounter a computer scientist.

I think what draws me most to the field of biology, and the prospect of biological computing, is that there are insane uncertainties and super complex pathways; the fact that the same test run 10 times in a biological machine may not yield the same result each time.

My main challenge is in starting a dialog with people in the field. Perhaps I will try communicating in scientific method lingo and see how that fares.

Overall, the feeling I get is that biologists fear the commoditization of their field, and I observe that even the progressive bio startups are still sticking to the (closed) pharmaceutical model of business.