I learnt of small and economical digital microscopes that would allow me to take them to schools and informal learning environments. Two different makes of digital microscopes came to my notice and I liked the features of Motic DS-300. The specific feature that I liked in DS-300 was that it could be used as a conventional microscope with an eyepiece, and also as a digital microscope by swapping the eyepiece with a camera. The digital camera looked like a simple webcam and so I was concerned about the resolution. Nevertheless, since it was a reasonably affordable price for an interesting experiment in education, I took a chance.

My first experience using the Motic DS-300 microscope in a teaching & learning set-up was with a group of middle schoolers. I used the fixed slides that came along with the kit. It was easy to show them what I wanted them to see on the slides, using the MoticPlay software and the digital display on a computer screen. While the kids had a great time watching the slides directly using the eyepiece and on the screen (using the digital camera) I wasn't satisfied since the material could have been a lot more interesting. Fortuitously, I happened to visit Dr.Surendra Ghaskadbi's laboratory at the Agarkar Research Institute in Pune who kindly gave me some hydra. The hydra survived the flight trip back to Hyderabad and I was able to take them to the middle schooler children a week later. I first made all of them see the hydra at different magnifications using the eyepiece. The kids who could identify the hydra were very excited to see the obvious movement of the tentacles. The excitement of the entire group went beyond my expectations when I projected the digital views onto a large screen. The joy of seeing living specimens was immediately visible.

Unfortunately, I could not keep the hydra alive for long and had to fall back on the fixed slides that came along with the microscope. When I had to visit a seventh grade class in Shamshabad area (near the new airport in Hyderabad), I began to think about what live material I could use. I tried a few samples of stagnant water with little success of finding anything interesting. As the day of the visit came close, I remembered the experiments that we had to do in my high school botany laboratory - to understand the microscopic structure of plant roots and shoots. When I visited the school, I went into their play ground and plucked a couple of tender shoots. I made quick cross sections of the stem with a razor blade and placed them as specimens. I was impressed with the quality of images that showed up on the screen. The only problem was that I could not excite the students. I then realized that neither the shoot sections, nor anything inside them were animated.

Sometime later, I was able to access live paramecia cultures, newly hatched artemia (brine shrimp), and a tank filled with amazing creatures including a few species of rotifers. I am yet to show these beautiful creatures to school children, but quite a few undergraduate students and even graduate students have watched them under the microscope with amazement. The clarity with which one can observe the movements of paramecia, particularly the slipper shaped body of the protozoan at higher magnifications is remarkable. The rotifers present another spectacular view of the microscopic world. The movement of 'wheels' or 'rotors' on the heads of rotifers that generate currents to suck food material amazes everyone. The peculiar dichotomy of foraging behaviours is very evident when one scans through the tank water samples - in one instance they are motile in search of food, and in another instance they are sessile drawing food using their 'wheels'.

Not surprisingly, the developing zebrafish embryo can also be viewed very well with this microscope. Unlike the fast paced movements the single celled paramecia, and the 'wheel' movements of the rotifers, watching the first day of zebrafish development requires patience and interest in understanding the fascinating mechanics of vertebrate embryogenesis. The second day of development can be quite exciting to everyone - the undifferentiated mass of cells during the first several hours of development transforms into distinct tissues and organs (e.g. somites and the eyes) by the end of 12-14 hours. The spontaneous body movements that become obvious from 18 hours after fertilization and the beating heart around 26 hours bring out the “wow”s from children and adults alike.

With the Motic microscope in hand and access to a few live specimens I was able to go to a diverse range of learning environments to talk about the diversity in the living world, complexity present in 'simple' and not so simple organisms, and the process of embryogenesis. This has been very easy since the microscope is very light weight and quite small in size, in addition to its affordability. Of course, I need my laptop to make a completely mobile and portable microscopy lab.

The mobile microscopy lab can be a valuable tool to get young minds excited about biology, and science in general. Biologists and teachers can team up to create simple lesson plans for these mobile labs, and extract the most from all the efforts. I strongly feel that these efforts, when expanded even modestly, contribute immensely to the enrichment of learning environments. Most importantly, there is great pleasure in sharing the excitement of science with young people. This is my testimony.

References and Links:
1. David Walker, A personal review of the Motic DigiScope 300 LED field microscope with digital camera. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-...
2. User photos: http://sites.google.com/site/hydbiort/motic

Many institutes in India, both autonomous and state funded, offer the five year PhD programs, whereas the six-year Integrated MS-PhD programs are available only at a handful of places including IISc, NCBS, JNSCAR, NBRC and TIFR! Typically the competition for the seats available is high due to a perceived exclusivity of these programs. But let’s keep all that aside…. So, how do you evaluate which one is the right program for you?

Let’s talk of the Integrated PhD program first. The purpose of the BS-MS-PhD sequence is to gradually condition one’s thoughts towards research, while providing a view of the trials and tribulations in small doses. Int. PhD is meant to give you a jump start in that process and is tailored for those who have decided that their lives are dedicated to scientific research. One is required to have a well-developed sense of breaking down any complex scientific problems into small manageable bits, on-demand problem solving, self-motivation and focus. Once selected, people find the first 1-2 years as being the most challenging and grueling. Why? The enormous transition in the way one acquires knowledge, works and connects to the science around. Our present BS courses may provide a primer to reading papers, journal clubs, oral presentations and goal driven scientific projects, but it does not compare to the thorough grounding given in MS programs. So when one joins an Int. PhD program, just in 2-3 months, one is shuttled from a semester-and-exam based system to one where you are learning skills and tools all the time, with evaluations based on presentation, data talks and discussions. It’s expected that one knows as much as one’s MS batchmates.

The information gathering protocol shifts from books to journals and talks to rationally review opposing arguments and collate large amounts of data in a short period of time, owing to which it becomes distressing to people at times. Most of all, one has to handle adversities with great maturity -- be it from failed experiments and projects or just tough courses. Moreover, Integrated PhD is also a commitment where if things head south, you’re left with a BS degree- there is hardly any “Get MS and get going” option.. This aspect is being currently addressed with some programs starting to offer MS by research as an exit option.

So is there an upside? Yes! If you have a focused scientific problem that just invites your attention, and you are itching to get going on that way and can handle any curve ball thrown at you, then you’re suited for this. You’ll learn more in the first year of Int. PhD than you ever will in the first year of any other degree. The fact that all premier institutes offer this program ensures that from the outset you will be exposed to cutting-edge technology, world-renowned speakers and an internationally trained faculty. Your already active mind will get more stimuli that it can handle. The fellowships are better than any you’ll get for MS and perhaps entry level Biotech jobs. And most importantly you’ll be the youngest in any level you enter (post-doc, industrial jobs etc) with many more years to devote to the field than others. This advantage of more time becomes important if you want to take a break and try something new. You have the time for that sabbatical that others generally don’t. The advantages are not tangible immediately but form a fundamental part of your career as you mature.

If one imagines oneself as an investor with a sizable amount of money (intellect, time and effort) , one can either play is safe investing in fixed term deposits (aka PhD programs) or speculate in the share market with variable returns (aka Int. MS-PhD programs). If one has the capacity to manage risky propositions well, it can leave one quite rich but there is a possibility of being hit real hard in harsh economic times.

Introspection and thought is strongly advised to identify which format is good for you. Both styles have produced competent scientists, the “Int-ies” being a growing breed. In the end, the decision is solely based on what are the risks versus the benefits are for you, much like any financial investment on the market.

Traditionally, biology was a descriptive discipline. Beginning around the fourth decade of last century, there has been an increasing involvement of physicists and chemists in elucidating biological principles and properties of biological molecules and following this, an experimental, and concomitant with it, reductionist approach became the new and preferred direction for biological studies. The reductionist approach has indeed been largely responsible for the astounding progress and excitement seen in biology during the past five decades or so.

However, the extreme reductionist approach and heavy reliance on the so-called molecular biology in recent years has become a negative factor and has occluded the enormously exciting view that biology presents today. Most of the current biological research of an individual is directed to obtain a deeper understanding of the functions of a given molecule or a given structure in cell or a specific phenomenon and the underlying mechanism. Thanks to the remarkable developments in technology available to biologists in recent years, such efforts are providing very excitingly detailed and precise insights into the different biological processes. However, what is now needed, and which is indeed feasible, is to remove the disconnect between individual discoveries and integrate them to meaningfully understand the phenomenon in a biological context. All that is required to achieve such integration is a little broader understanding of biology that allows amalgamation of the organismic and molecular biology. Systems biology approach is beginning to show the advantages of inter-connections. However, because of its heavy leaning on computational approaches, real-life situations are liable to be ignored.

When we look back in history of biology, we can see many examples of uncanny predictions made by "classical" biologists who had an integrative understanding of diverse biological systems but little idea of the mechanistic details. Although it is generally believed that biology became an experimental science in the wake of molecular biology, some of the experimental embryology that was practiced in later 1890s would surpass many of the current cell manipulation techniques. Among the many experimental embryologists of that time, I would specially mention Theodore Boveri, whom Gilbert in his book on Developmental Biology describes "the last of great observers of embryology and the first of great experimenters". Boveri was indeed one of the first "worm" developmental biologists because, working with the parasitic Ascaris, he provided a precise description of events of early cleavage divisions and how specific regions of chromatin were lost (chromatin diminution) in an orderly manner from the precursors of somatic, but not germ, cells and also experimentally demonstrated the factors that regulated the chromatin diminution events. His observations on abnormal growth of sea urchin eggs with aberrant chromosomal complement led him to find parallel in tumors; this finally resulted in his 1914 publication "Zur Frage der Entstehung Maligner Tumoren" ('The Origin of Malignant Tumours'), wherein he made seminal predictions about the basis of unrestricted growth of tumors. His predictions in 1914, without of course any background in "molecular biology", are uncannily and chillingly accurate since he predicted roles of chromosome instability, cell cycle checkpoints, oncogenes, tumor-suppressor genes, tumor predisposition etc to affect tumors (see Allan Balmain 2001 Cancer genetics: from Boveri and Mendel to microarrays. Nature Genetics 1:77-82). Those unaware of Boveri's studies, would believe that we learnt all about the roles of these factors because of the molecular biological approaches in cancer research. However, while Boveri did not have the technological advantages that today's cancer researchers have, he did have the advantage of integrative and original thinking that was not subject to the peer-reviewers' "watchful eyes"! There are many other examples where a better understanding of biological systems and the courage to come out with novel ideas led to very specific predictions that had fundamental implications and which have been understood in detail following the advent of molecular biology. Thus, the term telomere was proposed in 1930s by H.J. Muller on the basis of simple cytological observations, primarily of Barbara McClinktok, that while normal chromosome ends do not show tendency to fuse, the freshly broken chromosome ends undergo rapid fusions; therefore, the inference was that normal chromosome ends must have a special organization in the form of telomere. Realization of the "DNA end-replication problem" in 1970s led to a "rediscovery" of telomeres.

Unlike in the days of Boveri, Muller and others, we now have enormously rich and detailed information and equally powerful information retrieval systems. What we lack is an integrative view of the processes and phenomena that we research into. This is compounded by the lack of a formal training in organismic biology. There are many recent examples where "dogmas" or fashionable areas of research that flourished following some novel observations but got demolished or lost their charm within a short time. The rapid turnover in such cases can be traced to the narrow and reductionist view of the biological systems rather than realizing the enormous diversity that the extant organisms present.

With the flood of information that we have today, we can indeed have many more Boveris and Mullers if we enlarge the scope of our learning and thinking to encompass wider principles of biology rather than remain confined to the narrow domain of the molecule or process that one works with using more and more penetrating and precise methods. Those involved in teaching of biology and those excited young minds passionately researching into some of the fundamental biological processes, should begin to think in wider integrative manner so that the flood of information becomes a powerful tool to uncover the secrets of life's diversity rather than merely add to the mass of information. The way we teach biology must change so that the young minds are stimulated to think integratively, while learning the reductionist approach of analysis.

One of the reasons for a general absence of prophetic statements in current biological literature of course is the concern about the impact factor and the reviewers' insistence on "mechanistic details", which I discussed in my earlierblogs. The impact factor and the peer-review process have their own justifications to be in place. Yet the real breakthrough in any field of science comes from novel hypotheses which stimulate new approaches and directions, rather than merely confirm what is expected. The young biologists must take advantage of the numerous possibilities by learning to take a broader and integrative view of their own observations and discoveries.

Indian education system, like in many other spheres of our society, is at the cross-roads trying to find a way to enhance the number and quality of future academic as well as industrial researchers of the country, while still maintaining a socialist approach to educate large masses of relatively underprivileged people.

According to the modern source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another. India is one of those rare civilizations, which had formal education since time immemorial. Indian education was founded with strong emphasis on logic and mathematics. British brought the Greco-Roman system of knowledge to India in early 19th century, which is the foundation for modern science. India quickly picked this up and many Indians significantly contributed to science and mathematics. When India became independent, in 1947, the literacy was as low as 12% and may be lower. Absolutely there was no scope of any foreign investment to a country that people like Winston Churchill thought would survive only for few weeks. The need was to educate masses to build the nation and to build the infrastructure to stimulate further growth in the economy. The emphasis naturally was on technical education, which very quickly (50 years is very small time in the life of any nation, more so of one with a billion people) made India one of the largest economies in the world. Much of the new wealth is from providing services to the world. However, to ensure sustainable growth, we need to move from service-economy to knowledge economy.

While there is no doubt that there never had been better time than today in the recorded history to pursue science in India, the challenge is to secure the future. Planning for future is more challenging now than in 1950s. At that time, the options were limited due to scarcity of resources. Very small number of trained manpower was available to steer the country's education initiatives. Now, very large number of accomplished scientists and technocrats are available to pursue a number of options to meet the aspirations of the people. It may sound cliché. India is a country of enormous diversity. No single model of science education and research would cater to the needs and aspirations of the entire nation. Still, a consensus seems to have emerged on the need to integrate high quality research with undergraduate teaching to improve science education in India and to enhance the number and quality of future academic as well as industrial researchers in the country. By dedicating certain amount of time for teaching, faculty is also expected to improve the quality of their research.

Since the beginning of this century, several new initiatives are being explored such as,

(i)Establishment of large number of broad education centers: Central Universities, IISERs, NISER, IITs, NIPERs

(ii)Establishment of specialized centers of research and education in space technology, defense technology, translational research, biotechnology and stem cell biology

(iii) Expansion of existing institutes such as IITs, IISc and TIFR. The latter two would soon be initiating undergraduate education programs.

Only time will tell what would be the outcome of these initiatives. Most decisions in historical contexts would look either very good or bad, but at the time of making the decisions, we would be dabbling with only hypothetical situations. Any decision would be based on some logical thinking that suggests that a particular hypothetical scenario would be better than the other hypothetical one. Here, we could learn something from evolution. More the genetic diversity better the chances that a species survives and proliferates. This is because we could always find few individuals carrying genetic variants that would help them to adapt (better than their ancestral population) to a new environment. This is precisely what we need to do. Wiser the nation if it invests on a broad-based education system, which nurtures both curiosity and creativity amongst its citizens. Such education system would create amongst the people the skills and competence in diverse fields and thereby improves the overall preparedness of the country in the long run.

Irrespective of diversity in the opinion on what and how to research and teach, there is no argument that on the three conceptual foundations, on which any scientific enterprise should be built.

(i) Strong emphasis on basic science: When it comes to science, "no national scientific enterprise can be sustainable in the long term if it does not contain generous room for curiosity-driven research. While the technological outcomes and social benefits of basic science are almost always long-term and rarely predictable, such science creates and consolidates overall competence and intellectual diversity" (from: http://insaindia.org/pdf/INSA_Vision_2010.pdf).

(ii) Excellent academic ambiance: Success of any creative endeavor is dependent on large number of excellent people working in the same organization. This creates a threshold level of academic excellence and provides necessary forum for cross-fertilization of ideas, internal collaborations and unbiased internal criticism. A critical level of academic excellence is also necessary to pursue bigger questions in science, most of which would require interdisciplinary efforts. If we read the history of most academic places in India and other countries, an ambiance described above has been the foundation for success. Only way to create such an ambiance is by carefully choosing faculty for their research accomplishments, promise, teaching proficiency and mentoring abilities. Ideally, faculty should have the ability and courage to challenge dogmas, inculcate concepts of scientific and mathematical inquiry in their research and teaching and promote critical thinking and reasoning amongst their students. Equally important is to ensure that our faculty upholds highest standards of integrity and ethics in their professional and personal life.

(iii) Free and fair organizational system: Academic freedom, a democratic and consultative administrative set up, unbiased periodic review of performance and strict accountability to the support provided are equally important for maintaining highest standards of academic excellence.

I thought I would write something about what is topical in India since the beginning of 21st century: science education, facilitating high quality of research and interdisciplinary science. Ron Vale, Vijay and Subhash Lakhotia have already written on topics directly or indirectly related to these issues.

Teaching Biology:

Sometime ago, I wrote an article for "Teacher Plus" on how to make biology teaching more contemporary. Looks like the bigger question is how to make biology teaching more exciting and meaningful. Most students complain that biology is too descriptive, boring and often does not make any sense. True, how do you convince a 12- or 14-year old kid the importance of knowing the differences between an urceolate flower vs salver form flower? When I was in school, it was a nightmare to remember classes of Aestivation (and of course, I had to remember the term Aestivation itself!) or parts of human heart such as Brachiocephalic veins or superior and inferior vena cava.

While how to teach is a big question for all subjects, what to teach is also an equally bothering question for biology teachers. Due to the hype on biotechnology/genetic engineering, the emphasis has been on replication, transcription and translation. Properties of a biological system, more likely than physical or chemical systems, changes once we start reducing it to its smaller components (irreducibility of a complex system). While reductionist approach is important to understand the structure and mechanism, the story is incomplete unless the phenomenon is studied at the systems level. Without sufficient understanding, for example, of host-pathogen interactions at the systems level how can we predict epidemics or therapeutics against swine flu or bird flu?

There are many victims of our highly reductionist approach to biology. Ecology, population, organismal and even cell biology are not taught with sufficient emphasis. Over the decades, we have lost experts, who could talk about plant/animal-environment, plant-plant and plant-animal interactions, animal behaviour, bio prospecting, and many such knowledge domains. True, one person can't represent the entire breadth of biology. That is why we need large number of people, each with expertise in different domains of biology. Meaningful collaboration amongst ecologists, population, organismal, cell and molecular biologists is important to make biological research and teaching more meaningful.

Although this discussion is about "what to teach" than "how to teach", one question that is pertinent here is, should our approach to biology be synthesis or analysis. Should we teach molecular biology of the cell or cell biology of molecules?

When I am asked where I work and reply “IIT Bombay” the most common question that follows is “What do you teach?”. To this I inevitably reply “Molecular biology and microbiology, but my lab does research on malaria”. Now, after this happened several times, I simply had to introspect and ask myself why I am so defensive when it is assumed that I am a teacher. Perhaps it has something to do with my perception of myself which is as a scientist; perhaps it has to do with people’s perception of teachers. The introspection has been quite useful though and made me realize that I really enjoy teaching and find that it is complementary to my research. As part of this process, I came up with a Top Five list of why teaching is fun so here goes:

# 5) Teaching is instant gratification: when one prepares a good lecture knowing the main points that need to be conveyed, it is sheer delight to watch the sparks in the eyes of students who have just realized they learnt something different and interesting. They ask questions that make you think more deeply and the dialogue has begun from the very first hour. Contrast this to the time taken in getting my lab up and running: weeks would go by waiting for equipment to be purchased, another few weeks for it to arrive, months before students got the hang of culturing Plasmodium falciparum and years before we could gather enough data to think of publishing a paper. Teaching gives me immediate rewards!

# 4) Teaching is creative (Part 1): getting the point across is not always easy and I have had to think up interesting ways of doing this. I’ll give you an example. My first month of teaching molecular biology at IIT Bombay was a disaster. I had a ‘syllabus’ and a few prescribed textbooks and no idea how much Indian students were taught at the Bachelor’s level since my own B. Sc. degree was a over decade old by then. After teaching facts from the textbooks for a month, I couldn’t help being depressed by the sneer on one of the student’s faces (Vinit, I can never forget him). Most of the students were too polite to say anything but Vinit’s inability to mask his emotions and ability to disagree with me constantly on factual information was just becoming too much to bear. Rather than berate him (easy to do as I was in a position of power) I decided to accept his not-so-subtle message that the students already had enough of facts and I needed to give them something more. I realized that what I myself loved about science was how every little strange thing is interesting (e.g. how do bacteria ‘know’ their mid-point so they can divide, why has the language of the genetic code not changed on this planet in contrast to human languages which have evolved). I now start every new topic with a few slides on ‘Who cares?’ and towards the end of the course have the students form groups and present for a few minutes why a topic is cool, exciting and worth studying.

I also love the way discoveries are made, the scientific method and the wide range of experimental approaches biologists take to answer their favorite questions. Around this time, my friend Connie Chow who was teaching at Simmons College in Boston told me about a textbook by Robert Weaver that explained molecular biology through experimental approaches. The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place and ever since then I have taught the subject by analysis of experiments. It is really fun to see the looks on student’s faces when we discuss the Meselson and Stahl experiment on semi-conservative DNA replication (something they have memorized by heart) and I point out that the bacterial culture used was not synchronized. So how could they have seen such discrete bands of heavy, intermediate and light DNA? I have been teaching this course for the past 8 years and the feedback is excellent. Thanks, Connie and Vinit!

# 3: Teaching is creative (Part 2): I have been teaching a lab course in microbiology and in addition to conveying concepts and lab techniques to the students, I devise games that help them learn. For example, we teach the same lab in two batches and in the second half of the semester we have a competition between the two batches, with each competing for the prize of an ice-cream treat from me (not a huge prize I will admit but very nice during the Mumbai summer). The criteria for evaluation are: how many petri dishes are broken by each batch, how many plates are sterile, how well the batches manage their time, teamwork (measured by the number of confused students wandering around), reproducibility of results, exciting results, etc. This game makes the students more confident, independent, careful about their technique and encourages them to plan better and work together well.
Creativity is also encouraged in the students as microbiology, like much of biology, is incredibly visual. The students isolate colorful bacteria from soil, the lake near IIT or food from the hostels and do biochemical tests that (among other things) make Triple Sugar Iron slants turn pink, yellow and black. At the end of the course the students did a microbiology art project that we photographed and uploaded on the course website. Check out the ‘microbial’ flower in the image. Microbiology is fun!

# 2) Teaching feeds into my research: I teach molecular biology which covers almost every topic under the sun and this breadth of subjects has kept me in touch with the fundamentals of many research areas. My lab works on regulation of gene expression in the malaria parasite P. falciparum and I can think of several instances where the stuff I taught in class turned out to be really handy in the lab while discussing how to take experiments forward. For example, Balu, a PhD student in the lab, found his project veering in the direction of correct choice of translation initiation codons. We were talking about how to test which of two AUG codons was the preferred start codon. I had just taught translation in class the week before and vividly remembered Marilyn Kozak’s classic experiments using the pre-proinsulin gene with two start codons that were out-of-frame, the choice of each one resulting in translation of the pre-proinsulin protein or not. Balu and I figured out that we could use a similar approach in P. falciparum and the project continued merrily forward. Teaching forces me to be very good at the fundamentals which always help while doing research!

# 1) The number 1 reason why teaching is fun: to teach well you have to be willing to learn. Every time I teach, even a topic that I think I know quite well, I learn a lot myself. This is certainly true for courses like molecular biology, microbiology and genetic engineering. It is even more fun to teach a new course that is out of your comfort zone. I taught cell biology where the syllabus was largely about microtubules, cytoskeleton, motors, organelle trafficking and cell division. What fun it was to learn how molecular motors are directional and move their cargo around in the cell. Equally exciting was reading how scientists measured the ‘step size’ of myosin and whether it ‘walks’ hand over hand or like an inchworm. Analogies are always useful and being a Bombay girl I thought up the analogy of the General Post Office as the sorting place (Golgi) where postmen (motors) use the directional Mumbai trains (microtubules) to deliver mail that has PIN codes (targeting signals). Coincidentally, one of the recent projects in the lab involves studying microtubules in P. falciparum and my teaching helped to build a foundation of information to understand this topic better. Teaching is a sure way of spending your lifetime learning!

Majority of the traditional biology departments in colleges and universities continue to teach what was being taught several decades ago as if biology has ceased to be a live discipline. On the other extreme are courses that teach only the so-called molecular biology or biotechnology without much reference to basic biology (including cell biology, genetics etc). This later class of teaching programs seems to believe that the so-called "classical biology" is dead and is best forgotten! Obviously both are misguided and, therefore, are "producing" graduates who fail to really appreciate the vast canvas of biology and rather than feel the excitement of being at the threshold of revelation of deeper secrets of life, they either get lost on the path or just carry on with trivial issues.

The other limitation that most of the teaching programs in our universities/colleges suffer from is the highly compartmentalized subject combinations. Generally, the "bio"- and the "math"-groups are not allowed to gel together. The consequences are obvious – a near complete lack of truly interdisciplinary approach to any topic of research. The inability to appreciate and understand languages of different disciplines does not allow even to wisely use the laboratory gadgets (small or big) that are becoming increasingly common and fashionable. While these gadgets are expected to make life of the investigator "simpler", in the absence of proper understanding, they may in reality bring in more complications because of the indiscriminate use without the application of mind.

The other side of the vast canvas of biology is that if one were to really "teach" everything that continues to be added by researchers, burden of the enormous information would indeed flatten the recipients beyond recognition!

Obviously, we need a balanced learning process where concepts rather than the quantum of information have the priority. The big question for discussion is: how do we achieve this balance? I will share my views later.