Hi HN!

I have been a long time lurker but got to a point now where I am stuck on how to look for an answer and thought that this crowd might have some good insight.

There was a question about how to raise funds for rare disease research (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30250496) posted yesterday that felt like the last drop for me to try to pursue learning about genetics.

If one wants to learn about how the genetic code works, how proteins work, and be able to investigate their functions what kind of undergrad program does one need to apply to? I still have trouble explaining what exactly I am trying to do, but let me try:

For various times in my life I've thought I should study genetics and try to learn about how life works in its essence. For the past few months, I have been stumbling upon various posts and websites that talk about new discoveries on understanding of human genome, therapies being developed and so on. Almost as if getting a sign that I should dive into learning it as it is something that I feel I am interested in. Knowing how to code definitely seems to be something that helps, but I don't want to work on simply getting genetic data I don't understand and write software that apply transformations or generate visualizations of this kind of data and make it available for scientists to do what I deem to be the most interesting part of the work. I want to be able to understand what the data means and be able to review and reflect about it and give input to advance the understanding in the field.

So, if one wants to get in this field to be able to do research on how genes relate to diseases and have a deeper understanding of protein formation and inner workings as well as have access to equipment that would allow performing this kind of research, what should one study? Is going back to college and taking an undergrad course the best way? Or is there a way of learning this kind of stuff at home (and if so, how does one do that)? I'd assume that it might not be possible to go too far by studying at home just because without access to equipment it might be very hard to make progress in this area.

I don't know if it matters, but I am in my mid 30s and my work is completely unrelated. I work in security and programming, and have not had any kind of exposure to this kind of biology other than what you learn at highschool (and that was about 20 years ago). I am at a point where I feel my interest in the field seems to be diminishing and I might be burnt out. For some years now I have been trying to figure out what would be a different career path I could try, but always ended up at a point where I felt none of them had any meaning in the end. When I think about learning about this topic, I get this warm feeling I haven't had in a while and don't have that dreaded feeling that my work won't matter, because I genuinely think it can be important.

I wouldn't be doing this for the money (I honestly don't even know how much money one makes in this line of work) but for the chance to learn, satisfy my curiosity and with luck help advance our understanding of how living things work. And hopefully being able to do this kind of work would allow me to offer to help in situations such as the post mentioned above.

Any help or advice on how to proceed on this, or how to become a bit less ignorant in order to be able to understand what exactly it is I am trying to achieve would be very appreciated. Anyone working in the field that could share their experience in it and how they got into it, would also be very appreciated.

Thanks!

PS: Sorry if the line of thought is all over the place there, I was trying to convey what I want to do and the way I am feeling about it while not missing any information I think would be important.

PPS: The throwaway account is due to me mentioning burn out and not wanting to have such information traced back to me.