Originally posted by Jodie
I appreciate your curiosity, and I don't want to be mean. But it seems like you're asking to pursue a grad course in math, biology, chemistry, physics, bioinformatics, and probably a few I've missed. That's cool and all, but you're lacking a few of the prerequisites to 'get it'

...

My interest personally has been peaked in no small part by your questions. I find myself brushing up on my organic chem, biochem, molecular dynamics and pursing the relatively new (to me) field of bioinformatics. I thank you for that.

I'm more than willing to share my reading list with you - but you're likely to get frustrated if you aren't comfortable in atleast second year chem and second semester biology...
When I was writing up the first post, I had a better good idea that the thread it would create would eventually land itself in the Educational section ... though I was surprised how fast it initially did. Because of this, I've tried to become a layman's advocate by thinking what questions they might ask so when they read this thread, hopefully they'll come away better understanding what we're doing here and why. The first post was to peak people's interest ... even its title was designed that way. And I knew the first replies to that post would be filled with techno jargon and high-level/shorthand (to a layman) answers. My subsequent replies were simply to get simpler more-complete answers. To get layman definitions of the techno jargon. To get explanations of some of the basic concepts and science underneath it all. I think the resulting thread has done a fairly nice job doing that and I think it is great that people have been willing to take the time to help in this regards.

Now, yes, I could have looked up most of this on the web, but that wasn't the point. I knew that the vast majority of the people that would read this thread wouldn't do such web searching so I've tried to get those-that-knew to give explanations here in this thread. I was even counting on fellow crunchers to pick up the ball when DF staff weren't interested ... as people did in this thread when Howard [a.k.a. Brian the Fist] wasn't up to giving some definitions and/or explanations. And that's no gripe about Howard either. It is great that someone that's part of the DF staff took the time to post answers. In all, this has been a very nice educational thread. There's only a few more of my questions that I hope other crunchers are willing to stand up to the plate and try to answer ... as I think Howard's given what he's going to give. Depending on those answers (i.e., how well they explain themselves in layman terms), I'll likely stop asking questions so this thread can return once more to the Educational section.

Again, to all that have replied, I thank you for doing so. I've learned more and I hope others that read this thread feel likewise.

Oh, and to those that read this in the Educational section, if you have a question about something in this thread, ask it! Not only will you then hopefully get an answer thus know, but others have probably thought of the same question but never took the initiative to ask it. For the only dumb question is the one not asked.