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Beyond the gene.

Evelyn Fox Keller1, David Harel

  • 1Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Plos One
|November 29, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Biologists struggle to define the gene. This paper proposes a new concept, the "genitor," to better capture inheritance, distinguishing static traits from dynamic functions and aligning with modern biology.

Area of Science:

  • Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • Evolutionary Biology

Background:

  • The classical definition of a gene faces challenges in contemporary biology.
  • Disagreement persists among biologists regarding a unified gene concept.
  • Emerging complex links between biological structure and functionality complicate existing paradigms.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To address the definitional crisis surrounding the gene.
  • To propose a novel conceptual framework for inheritance.
  • To offer a richer, more expressive, and clearer alternative to the gene concept.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing challenges in gene definition.
  • Conceptual development of an alternative framework.
  • Comparison of the proposed framework with the classical genotype/phenotype model.

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Main Results:

  • Introduction of the
  • genitor
  • (genetic functor) as a proposed alternative.
  • The
  • genitor
  • concept separates static inheritance from dynamic functionality.
  • The proposed framework integrates complex structure-function relationships found in modern biology.

Conclusions:

  • The
  • genitor
  • offers a more robust model for understanding inheritance.
  • This new concept aligns with and clarifies recent biological discoveries.
  • The
  • genitor
  • provides a clearer distinction between an organism's inherited state and its functional output.