SIGNAL SENSING AND BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

 SIGNAL SENSING AND BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Every living system should ‘understand’ what is happening around. The term ‘understand’ as used here refers to several levels of ‘recognizing‘ the events in the immediate surroundings. As such, ‘understanding’ may be by contact stimulus, receiving the physical pulse of light, responding to thermal variation [temperature] and action of gravitational pull and so on. One or many or all of these together cause ‘understanding’ by a biological system.

 Accordingly, the system may respond slowly or quickly based on the strength of the trigger and its impact on a select component like cell[s], pigments or on select enzymes and so on. Each such response can help ‘development’ in a plant or animal. So, different plants or animals respond differently to a common signal or pulse. Unravelllng the role of different signals is a complex study named ‘Developmental biology‘   [DB].DB itself constitutes a multi-disciplinary domain involving biochemistry, physiology, Genetics and cell biology/ molecular biology.  Biology has made rapid strides, availing of the advancements in several domains like Electron microscopy, membrane chemistry, electro physiology , energy processing moieties and energy transduction schemes and pathways. In view of the intricate balancing of interdisciplinary concepts, students from India are among the sought after across USA research laboratories in view their clarity of the overall processes as taught in some Indian universities especially in research schools / Biotechnology laboratories. We need to acknowledge the innate ability of our boys and girls to co-ordinate several inputs to derive or infer a gross picture by synthesis. Not without reason students from Northern states/ Kolkata/ Andhra regions and also from Bangalore, Mysore manage to gain research placements in US / UK / Australia. Select institutions in these places offer excellent training in all essential concepts that matter in domains of higher research.  Drug-designing / formulation to ‘personalized therapy’ is gaini9ng ground and is an interdisciplinary domain in its own right. Alert students would do well to look for such venues for study and avenues for research or employment

Now, it should be clear that ‘overseas assignments’ are not the exclusive domains of Doctors, Engineers or Software professionals. Even among them, only those who reveal outstanding functional merits stand a chance. Science education along proper lines is another area to explore for contributory research efforts.  Dear parents, please keep options open and let your son / daughter pursue domains which interest them. Avoid imposing ‘your preferences’ on them. In the ultimate analysis , any knowledge- acquired by right learning and to its full potential is better than ‘half baked ‘ incomplete acquisitions  even if in  frontline  subject domains of job –seeking. Learning languages is not any inferior either, provided the learner goes all out to be among the best in that field.

We –humans [biological systems ourselves] should sense the signal that ‘learning is not scoring marks; rather it is for soaring high in advanced areas of knowledge. Shake off your mind any imaginary feeling that xx subjects are superior to yy subjects or zz domains. Encourage your wards’ ability to communicate and provide for learning as many languages.  No knowledge can help our ascension unless we prune our skills for excellent communication.  I trust the message is clear.                   GOOD LUCK

Prof. K. Raman