I was told physics was a science, so if scientists are to care about this issue wouldn't the profs have brought it up at some point? It wasn't on the senior comprehensive test either.
Why do you expect your Physics professor to teach you biology? Take an entry level biology course and they will teach it to you. One of the basic "rules" in science is to only teach what your an expert in if it can be at all helped. So a physics professor isn't qualified to teach you about biology, nor has any reason to, because his goal is to teach you physics.
What kind of physics program are you in? I'm burned out with physics, I just took a final in an intro to quantum mechanics course last night. I did fairly well I think, considering its mind numbing to try to conceptialize whats going on.