TY - JOUR
T1 - Hierarchy, determinism, and specificity in theories of development and evolution
AU - Deichmann, Ute
N1 - Funding Information:
An example for big-data research is the work of the ENCCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) Consortium, a public research project launched and funded by the US National Human Genome Research Institute in September 2003 as a follow-up to the Human Genome Project. In 2012 it comprised 32 institutes and 442 consortium members; 1649 experiments were conducted on 147 cell-types, and the main paper has nearly 450 authors (Birney 2012). ENCODE aims at building a comprehensive parts list of functional elements in the human genome, including elements that act at the protein and RNA levels. Among the methods used to identify functional elements are comparative genomics, sequencing of a diverse number of RNA sources, integrative bioinformation methods, human curation, and immunoprecipitation of proteins that interact with DNA and RNA (see the project’s website at https://www.encodeproject.org/).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - The concepts of hierarchical organization, genetic determinism and biological specificity (for example of species, biologically relevant macromolecules, or genes) have played a crucial role in biology as a modern experimental science since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. The idea of genetic information (specificity) and genetic determination was at the basis of molecular biology that developed in the 1940s with macromolecules, viruses and prokaryotes as major objects of research often labelled “reductionist”. However, the concepts have been marginalized or rejected in some of the research that in the late 1960s began to focus additionally on the molecularization of complex biological structures and functions using systems approaches. This paper challenges the view that ‘molecular reductionism’ has been successfully replaced by holism and a focus on the collective behaviour of cellular entities. It argues instead that there are more fertile replacements for molecular ‘reductionism’, in which genomics, embryology, biochemistry, and computer science intertwine and result in research that is as exact and causally predictive as earlier molecular biology.
AB - The concepts of hierarchical organization, genetic determinism and biological specificity (for example of species, biologically relevant macromolecules, or genes) have played a crucial role in biology as a modern experimental science since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. The idea of genetic information (specificity) and genetic determination was at the basis of molecular biology that developed in the 1940s with macromolecules, viruses and prokaryotes as major objects of research often labelled “reductionist”. However, the concepts have been marginalized or rejected in some of the research that in the late 1960s began to focus additionally on the molecularization of complex biological structures and functions using systems approaches. This paper challenges the view that ‘molecular reductionism’ has been successfully replaced by holism and a focus on the collective behaviour of cellular entities. It argues instead that there are more fertile replacements for molecular ‘reductionism’, in which genomics, embryology, biochemistry, and computer science intertwine and result in research that is as exact and causally predictive as earlier molecular biology.
KW - Big-data genomics
KW - DST
KW - Holism
KW - Mechanistic systems biology
KW - Molecular reductionism
KW - Regulatory Genome
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85031723047&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40656-017-0160-3
DO - 10.1007/s40656-017-0160-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 29038982
AN - SCOPUS:85031723047
SN - 0391-9714
VL - 39
JO - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
JF - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
IS - 4
M1 - 33
ER -