ABSTRACT
Science hadn’t been Mary’s thing up to then. The author's course was a venture in a new direction, and even though she was bright, she soon hit a roadblock. The topic was protein folding. Esoteric as it sounds, it is almost impossible to understand biochemistry without a grasp of this subject, and Mary really struggled. If the readers tend to believe that brain wiring is primarily programmed by DNA, they may feel that the authors have started off on the wrong track. They definitely are headed toward ideas of flexibility in neuronal networks and away from more rigid programming. Things can look frighteningly complicated. But complexity like this is common in biology. For example, the number and diversity of different forms of life, literally millions of species each with different shapes and behaviors, seems impossible to understand or remember.
