As I mentioned previously, I have a two week break now. I'm planning on studying Molecular Biology and Genetics for USMLE Step 1 as a worm up. I started reading molecular biology today. This is one of the subjects that I'm obliged to learn for Step 1 but unfortunately they do not teach it at my school.
Here are a few words about molecular biology:
Simply put, Molecular Biology is studying biology but on the molecular level. Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interactions between DNA, RNA and protein biosynthesis and learning how these interactions are regulated.
Writing in Nature, William Astbury described molecular biology as: "... not so much a technique as an approach, an approach from the viewpoint of the so-called basic sciences with the leading idea of searching below the large-scale manifestations of classical biology for the corresponding molecular plan. ..."
Molecular biology was established in the 1930s, the term was first coined by Warren Weaver in 1938 however. Warren was director of Natural Sciences for the Rockefeller Foundation at the time and believed that biology was about to undergo a period of significant change given recent advances in fields such as X-ray crystallography. He therefore channeled significant amounts of (Rockefeller Institute) money into biological fields.
