Moreover, this is just what we know, but there must be so much more we don't know. It's astounding to think just how much more might be hiding in these very complex systems.
I was pretty surprised at the amount of biology we don't know (I'm writing software to help geneticists, a recent development for me). We know a lot, but its astounding how complex these biological systems are.
It is kinda amazing we're alive.
To get an idea about what life processes are like, you need to read endocrinologists like Robert Sapolski or Robert Lustig.
A lot of processes only work because there are so many moving parts each pushing only a little of the way, so that when something is wrong it doesn't all collapse.
You can do this in a lot of fields, but you're right, Bio is one where it's very easy to do.
I'm always struck by the 'pathways' side of mol-bio. It's not easy, but many grad students can come up with experiments that will lead to discoveries of new signaling pathways inside a cell. I'm sure someone has done a census of the number of pathways in their particular cell, but for all cells? It must be a gigantic number of proteins that interact.
And I'd hedge that we're no where even close to knowing how they all interact
The evolution of eukaryotes, which comprise all the plants and animals you see on David Attenborough's Life on Earth show, didn't occur until the Earth had developed an oxygen rich atmosphere.
What's amazing about eukaryotic cells is that they formed from colonies of prokaryotic cells, in a process called endosymbiosis.
There's a reason why the mitochondria in eukaryotic cells look like little bacteria like organisms. They actually were once separate prokaryotic organisms. Same for chloroplasts in plant cells.
How Two Microbes Changed History