Even education has become institutionalised. We manufacture engineers, artists, and doctors. Place a different make of puppet in place of the original one and the functionality is lost! This is what human society has descended to. A philosophic era where everyone is intellectually motivated and is familiar with all fields of study: the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, sounds like wishful thinking.
This initially started off as an article for a local Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) newsletter. The Overview (chapter 1) is that article. What follows then is a series of steps that have resulted in me attempting to solve the folding problem.
Chapter 2 deals with constructing a compiler for DNA translation. I consider this a solved problem (said tongue-in-cheekily), and therefore I decided to attack the protein folding problem instead.
My first attempt at solving the problem was to apply formal language theory to it (chapter 3). However I lacked the necessary rules, or grammar productions, and therefore had to investigate the dynamics of folding before I could proceed further.
Chapter 4 examines current methods that predict structure, discusses their strengths and weaknessness, and explores new possibilities. This is what my current research is all about.
Chapter 5 is to carry the represention of the protein in a computer to modelling the cell itself.
Chapter 6 discusses the philosophy; The Big Picture, so to speak.
The Reflections chapter is a look back on the whole idea. It's mainly there to clear up any fuzzy points that might have existed.
The Strange Loops in Biology chapter is an attempt to collate some of the cooler strange loops in biology.