Classification of Academic Studies Before Reading This Book
Main keywords
Introduction: Biological discoveries that enhance the world's resolution.

Part 1: An Invitation to the World of Biology

Life phenomena that stimulate curiosity and imagination
Two Questions That Will Unravel the Secrets of Life
A Wonderful World Discovered in the Dance of C. elegans
Proving and applying life phenomena
Every life phenomenon has a reason.
Q/A Ask and Answer

Part 2: The World's Smallest, Greatest Discovery

Three Conditions for an Attractive Model Organism
Nobel Prize-winning C. elegans
The fruit fly that rewrote the history of biology
Newly born mice through genetic targeting
Q/A Ask and Answer

Part 3: The Law of Such Amazing Life Phenomena

All life begins in a single cell.
Genes are discriminatory
Find the genes required for development
Death is programmed
Can humans overcome aging?
Q/A Ask and Answer

Part 4: The Mystery of Life: Converging Again into Evolution

How is biodiversity created?
Evolution, the Engine of Genetics and Mutation
How new traits are born
The thornback whale knows the secrets of evolution.
In search of species diversity and its origins
Q/A Ask and Answer

Outgoing Article: We Have Scientist's Genes Within Us
References

Biology, a discipline born from curiosity and completed with perseverance.
We have the DNA of a scientist in us!

Professor Lee Jun-ho says, “Biology is a discipline that begins with curiosity and is completed with perseverance,” and asserts that anyone with these two qualities is born with the qualities of a life scientist.
Curiosity is what allows new questions to develop into scientific questions, and the perseverance that allows us to never give up despite difficult experiments and repeated failures also stems from curiosity.
The same is true for Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko, winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, who are mentioned in this book.
Although the development of the core technology of mRNA vaccines was a great achievement that liberated humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic, the world did not initially take notice of this research.
In fact, Katharine Curriko was not even appointed as a professor because she had been conducting basic research on mRNA for so long that it was considered useless, and was even demoted to a part-time researcher.


In this book, the author defines studying life sciences as a challenge to questions about life phenomena that no one has ever asked or to which no answers have been found until now.
He says that the beginning comes from an attitude of not dismissing even the smallest curiosity lightly and connecting it with a question.
Now that we've identified the scientist gene within us, what's the next step in uncovering the secrets of life?

Increasing the resolution of the world
A great discovery in biology unfolds!

What questions should we ask to discover the universal truths that all life on Earth possesses? There are two core questions in biology that seek answers to this question.
The answer is “how” and “why.”
So, Part 1 of this book guides you through the methods of proving and applying life phenomena, focusing on two questions: “How do life phenomena occur?” and “Why do life phenomena occur?”
To illustrate this process clearly, the author presents fascinating stories such as the discovery of a new type of black peppered moth, the nictation behavior of the pretty little nematode, and the lake thorn fish that lost its spines.


Part 2, 'The World's Smallest but Greatest Discovery', showcases the various model organisms used to understand human life phenomena.
From the fruit fly, the greatest model organism that rewrote the history of biology, to the three-time Nobel Prize-winning C. elegans, to the mouse, which finally became the center of genetic research thanks to gene-editing technology, you can examine in detail the great achievements of model organisms that have accompanied the development of biology.
We can find the truth about life phenomena even in small creatures that appear completely different from us.


The following third part tells the story of the wondrous laws of life that occur between the birth and death of life on Earth.
From the mystery of 'development', where a single fertilized egg becomes a complex entity made up of trillions of cells, to 'evolution', which is caused by mutations that are the core of the diversity of life, to the 'genetic' phenomenon that selects discrimination to create various organs with the same genes, to the magical discovery of 'aging' called the 'Yamanaka Factor' that turns old mice into young mice, and finally, to 'death', the cell death process that all life can never avoid, the secrets of the magnificent phenomenon of life are concisely revealed.


Part 4, which concludes the book, explains in detail why the Earth we live on is so beautiful from the perspective of biodiversity and evolution.
In particular, when we examine the process by which a "mistake" called mutation acts as a driving force for evolution, the author's message mentioned in the introduction of the book, "There is no life phenomenon that occurs without meaning," becomes clearer, and our understanding of the world we live in deepens.


Biology is so interesting!
In the end, biology will save humanity.

This book is not an introductory biology book that explains biology from A to Z without leaving out anything.
It was written with the explicit goal of helping readers feel and realize that biology is a fascinating, even maddeningly fun, discipline, focusing on the core topics that must be known in the vast and profound study of life sciences.
Some might think, "Life science seems to be the domain of experts, just like the COVID-19 vaccine was developed exclusively by scientists. Why should ordinary people be interested?"
However, it is clear that humanity will once again face unforeseen adversities like the COVID-19 pandemic in the future, and life sciences will be at the center of the solution.
Even though biological discoveries carry with them the uncertainty of how and when they will save humanity, this is why they require greater public attention and support.


In that sense, this book, "Unexpected Biology Discovered in a Very Small World," will help readers breathe together with the present and future of life science, which is still quietly advancing.
It will also provide an answer to the fundamental question that humans have always cherished: "How were we born and why do we die?" from a biological perspective.
Now it's time to awaken the scientist gene within us.