Learning chemistry & biochemistry

There is one aspect of this project that I am surprised I've survived. This project requires detailed understanding of biochemistry and organic chemistry - the scientific disciplines about how biology works based on chemical reactions. And I struggled with biochemistry and organic chemistry in both college and medical school. Seriously struggled.

The problem was largely that the subject was taught in a way that did not work for my brain - it was all about memorizing. I'm about problem-solving. And back in the 1980s, you needed to memorize because it was really hard to look stuff up. Now? We are liberated by "search." (Thank you DARPA for developing the Internet). So what happens when you are taught a subject in a way that does not make sense to the way your brain works? You do poorly and you swear it off! That's the story of my relationship to chemistry. Until realizing I needed to engage if I wanted to help Ivan.

Given the resources on the Internet or that can be found using the Internet, we can find the tools to learn the way that works for us. I'm convinced that no matter what approach is used, solving important problems is easier after breaking down the big picture into small, more manageable components.

A key part of the problem in Parkinson's is that the energy-producing parts of cells - the mitochondria - are dysfunctional or gone. Without functioning mitochondria the neurons suffer from an energy crisis, which is a big part of the disease. To tackle this pathology figure out how a therapy such as RB-190 could provide an advantage, I needed to understand the chemistry of energy production, which is driven by a set of chemical reactions in our cells called the Krebs cycle. It consists of 10 steps and relies on a bunch of enzymes to produce the energy cells require to function (and stay alive).

I mimicked the structure of the Krebs cycle by breaking down my approach into several smaller steps. I did not learn much about the Krebs cycle in school - barely enough to pass that test. I probably would have remembered more details if there were an interesting story or two about its discovery. I suppose I could have read the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, but having recently done so, the speech is largely an homage to the work of those that led up to Krebs' discoveries. And while I can google Professor Krebs' speech now, there was no internet when I was in college and medical school.

So there I was, pushed by my buddy Ivan to figure out how to help him as he dwindled from his Parkinson's. And I realized I needed to understand the Krebs cycle as a system - not memorizing again each step (I only know there are 10 steps because I just looked it up). I used my puzzle solving brain coupled with its training when I studied engineering as an undergrad to see a bit at a time, to understand a bit at a time and identify the path to conquer Parkinson's a bit at a time.

I've had a few people ask me why I did not use AI to figure this out faster. That makes me chuckle. Perhaps I just don't understand AI's capabilities well enough, but I don't think it is capable of figuring out truly novel ways to solve a problem when those novel approaches are opposite to strongly held conventional thinking. I use perplexity.ai frequently - as it gathers information quickly and provides references I can look up and know whether the conclusions can be trusted. AI is proving capable of doing so many things so well and quickly, but for now, I still believe that good old-fashioned human intelligence is hard to top.

If you are faced with a problem that seems insurmountable because there is just too much knowledge serving as a barrier between you and success, then perhaps you can do what I did and am doing. Break down the big challenge into small ones - finding smaller tasks easier to complete or concepts simple enough to understand in one session of study/reading. After you string together a few productive days, and that extends to a few productive weeks, you can look back and see how far you've come. Of course there will be days or weeks where you can't seem to make any progress. But eventually you'll be confident that the barriers can be overcome and the problems solvable. You'll keep moving forward and solve important problems.