Biology by the Numbers
MCB137L/237L
Spring 2024
Developing Intuition: What Sets the Scale of X?
Drawing Inspiration From McClintock’s “A Feeling for the Organism”
No two plants are exactly alike. They’re all different, and as a consequence, you have to know that difference. I start with the seedling and I don’t want to leave it. I don’t feel I really know the story if I don’t watch the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately. And I find it a great pleasure to know them.
But What Does It Mean to Get a Feeling for the Organism in the Age of “Big Data”?
Science is built up of facts as a house is built up of bricks, but a mere accumulation of facts is no more a science than a pile of bricks is a house…
Henri Poincare
Schmidt, Heinemann, Nat. Biotech.
Going Beyond the Data to Understand What It Means Using Simple Estimates
Challenge: You’re on a Desert Island and You Have Nobody but Wilson
Biological Numeracy for Cell Biology
Knowing the Facts: Bionumbers
Tools for Biological Numeracy
Estimates: Developing Intuition and Flexing Our Quantitative Muscles
See Sanjoy Mahajan,
Street Fighting Mathematics
Another Example of What Sets the Scale of X�What Sets the Height of Mountains?
Strength of Materials
Compression Stress in Fracking
Hydraulic-fracturing equipment used in oil and natural gas fields usually consists of a slurry blender, one or more high-pressure, high-volume fracturing pumps (typically powerful triplex or quintuplex pumps) and a monitoring unit. Associated equipment includes fracturing tanks, one or more units for storage and handling of proppant, high-pressure treating iron[clarification needed], a chemical additive unit (used to accurately monitor chemical addition), low-pressure flexible hoses, and many gauges and meters for flow rate, fluid density, and treating pressure.[59] Chemical additives are typically 0.5% of the total fluid volume. Fracturing equipment operates over a range of pressures and injection rates, and can reach up to 100 megapascals (15,000 psi) and 265 litres per second (9.4 cu ft/s) (100 barrels per minute).[60]
Another Example of What Sets the Scale of X�What Sets the Height of Mountains?
The Crushing Number, Our First�Non-Dimensional Quantity
The Power of Dimensionless Numbers to Measure Competing Influences
Distribution of Protein Sizes Across Species
Cell Biology by the Numbers
The Molecular Census of E. coli and the Importance of Reproducibility
Taking the �E. coli census using mass spectrometry
Taking the E. coli census using mass spectrometry
Reproducibility in the E. coli cell census
Concentrations and Absolute Numbers in Your Favorite Cell Type
Concentrations and Absolute Numbers in Your Favorite Cell Type
Fidelity in biological polymerization: Key question, are we surprised?
The Insufficiency of Equilibrium Molecular Recognition
A Toy Model of Translation
The Kinetic Proofreading Idea: Energy to Fuel Error Correction
One Version of Developing Intuition: “What Sets the Scale of X?”
Personal view: if I can’t answer this question of what sets the scale in a problem, I don’t understand it.
Biology by the Numbers: A Quantitative View of the Great Human Experiment
Huge Amounts of Data on This 100,000 Year Experiment
Fluxes Are Dictated by Disequilibrium Little’s Theorem
A Planet of Humans and Cows
Our Daily Water Use
The Amazon Number
Measuring Human Impact Through Dimensionless Quantities
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