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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Now I really want to read a long form book like this comment ‘A Computer Scientists Guide to an intuitive understanding of biochemistry’

I’ve found it extremely hard to have a casual understanding of biology, unlike math where I feel like I have a solid high level sampling of the field. I’ve done a few bio and chemistry courses and books but it’s so deep and ill suited for a programmer who is used to asking how things work underneath at every level (you have to constantly stop yourself from asking why something does what it does and just go with it until it starts to connect later, which is more of a commitment than I could give).

Anyway thanks for your comment

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I would suggest carefully reading a deep textbook on biology like Molecular Biology of the Cell. You can't get a casual but realistic understanding of biology without a significant effort. That's a big problem in modern society. Biology is subtle and yet ever-important to us earth-bound organisms. The vast majority of people have only the most trivial understanding of biology, but scientifically we have a rather complete perspective and mental model that, due to its recent development, hasn't yet become common.

Great book suggestion! Absolutely agree as someone in the field

Biology and biochemistry is unbelievably complicated and difficult to grasp without truly going deep into the fundamentals

Slightly OT, but I am a computational chemist (PhD) looking to learn more about molecular biology (to say, and undergraduate or beginning graduate level). I am looking to learn more to see ways in which advances in computational chemistry tools could be applicable outside of our usual domains.

I am looking at Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts) and Cell Biology (Pollard). Both were recommended to me, but wondering what the pros and cons of each are (if you are familiar with both of them).

I'm not familiar with Cell Biology by Pollard but MBoC has incredible diagrams and flow charts that make pathways and other concepts incredibly easy to understand

I would suggest taking MIT's Secret of Life course on EdX. Its taught by Eric Lander who was a key figure in the human genome project and was a mathematician beforehand, so he follows an axiomatic approach that is much different than the way other schools teach biology

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secre...

Alternatively, Harvard Extension School has some great biology courses you can sign up and get credit for. Though those are mostly for pre-med career changers

Two recs:

- There is a (short) book called "A Computer Scientist's Guide to Cell Biology" by William Cohen which is a little pricey but very dense and helpful with a lot of concepts.

- Combine that with David Goodsell's "The Machinery of Life" which has a lot of great illustrations and practical examples.

Only way to truly learn biology imo is to read and do experiments. The feedback loop between those two things is what actually gives someone real intuition.

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