> "When Philip Bevilacqua decided to work out the shapes of all the RNA molecules in a living plant cell, he faced two problems. First, he had not studied plant biology since high school."<p>This. I think this is increasingly how biology is going to be done.<p>As new methodologies like PARS pop-up faster, and new domains of study like RNA structure remain unaddressed, there is open opportunity for teams of mechanical+software savvy people to make contributions at the bleeding edge.
There always seems to be more that we don't know about how the human body, and life in general, works. Every time people discover another layer it seems to get more complex and interesting. Sometimes I wish I had finished my PhD in Chemistry instead of becoming a programmer.