Dear Sofiane Benyamina

Why should you be afraid? Biology and biotechnology are not in danger!

Being a biologist, I would welcome mathematicians in the field of biology. Biological researchers and educators today are closely collaborating with mathematicians and scientists from other fields. Even if tomorrow's biologists had a more extensive mathematical and computational background, a single person cannot, in general, pursue all these fields in depth; thus, the formation of interdisciplinary collaborations continues to be essential in the pursuit of biology.

Did you know something?

Math allow biologists to describe how molecules move in and out of cells, how bacteria shuttle through blood vessels, how drugs get broken down in the body and many other physiological processes. Studying the geometry, topology and other physical characteristics of DNA, proteins and cellular structures has shed light on their functions and on approaches for enhancing or disrupting those functions.

Scientists use math to piece together all the different parts of a cell, an organ or an entire organism to better understand how the parts interact and how perturbations in these complex systems may contribute to disease. Also, designing experiments including clinical trials require math (statistical significance).

The interdisciplinary approach is at the heart of many research areas, for instance, in genomics, where the size and complexity of the data sets and the scale of the problems require joint expertise of computer scientists, statisticians, and biologists. So, mathematics is required at every stage of science, just as I mentioned above namely, in designing an experiment, seeking response patterns, and in the search for underlying mechanisms.

Sofiane Benyamina , I do understand your question and thinking, but you need to understand that collaborative research is the need of the hour. Biology is becoming a more quantitative science, a trend that has accelerated and been recently spurred by advances in computing power and data gathering technologies. Mathematical and statistical approaches have played a fundamental role in biological understanding throughout biology.

So, we need to think big so that humankind may benefit.

Best Regards,

Malcolm Nobre

Dear Malcolm Nobre,

Thank you for your reply, I completely agree with you, I myself use mathematics, however I use them as tools and I do not doubt the effectiveness of this science in analysis. However, the problem when articles are produced 100% by mathematicians which scares me a little and risks drowning out the real information of a specialist with information from a non-specialist and we clearly noticed this during the COVID19 pandemic where all their predictions about the virus and its spread were wrong, which unsettled people on a psychological level.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming increasingly common in scientific research, including in the field of biology and biotechnology. Collaborations between biologists and mathematicians can be especially fruitful, as mathematicians can provide valuable modeling and quantitative analysis tools to help biologists understand complex biological systems.

It is true that in some cases, mathematicians may publish more in certain fields of biology than biologists themselves. However, this is not necessarily a danger to the field of biology. Rather, it reflects the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing scientific knowledge.

Furthermore, it is not accurate to assume that mathematicians who turn to biology are doing so because they can no longer publish in mathematical fields. Many mathematicians are drawn to biology because of the exciting and challenging research questions it poses, and because of the potential for their mathematical skills to make a real impact on understanding biological systems.

In short, interdisciplinary collaboration is a valuable tool for advancing scientific knowledge in the field of biology and biotechnology. Rather than seeing it as a threat to the field, we should embrace it as a way to deepen our understanding of complex biological systems.

Dear Ashok Kamalanathan,

I agree with what you say, however it should remain at the stage of post-experiment modeling tool and not become too much a prediction tool at the expense of traditional biology, that of laboratory experience and on the different fields of application.

Life sciences have become part of the economic production assembly line, hence all types of quantification are introduced into your discipline, dear Sofiane Benyamina Imo, this is not a matter of opportunism, but a mental dominance of utilisation thinking.

Hello dear Stephen I. Ternyik,

indeed it could be that too, or fashionable trends, I used the term opportunistic because each time scientific, economic, ecological, public health trends appear, everyone jumps in on it and becomes an expert. Afterwards, we forget it and move on to the next one.

Yes, dear Sofiane Benyamina , there do also exist fashions in science !

yes, unfortunately the opportunists made it exist.

Opportunism is a behavioral product of human evolution, dear Sofiane Benyamina No social system can easily do away with it, but in science it is usually not so violent as in politics.

yes, I agree with you that it is part of the evolution of human beings and also in the evolution of different species. Right now, I am comparing human opportunism with other species as I did before writing a book in French, in which I compared the intelligence of being human with that of microorganisms and cells, the title of this book is "Everything that happens in the "head" of cells and microorganisms. Do cells and microorganisms have a “brain”? ".