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2006
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385
pages
English
Ebooks
2006
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
27 janvier 2006
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9780822387336
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries-such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna-challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results and interpretations of those results based on the orthodox view of genetic determinism, a growing number of scientists urge a rethinking of what a gene is and how it works. In this collection, a group of internationally renowned scientists present some prominent alternative approaches to understanding the role of dna in the construction and function of biological organisms.Contributors discuss alternatives to the programmatic view of dna, including the developmental systems approach, methodical culturalism, the molecular process concept of the gene, the hermeneutic theory of description, and process structuralist biology. None of the approaches cast doubt on the notion that dna is tremendously important to biological life on earth; rather, contributors examine different ideas of how dna should be represented, evaluated, and explained. Just as ideas about genetic codes have reached far beyond the realm of science, the reconceptualizations of genetic theory in this volume have broad implications for ethics, philosophy, and the social sciences.Contributors. Thomas Burglin, Brian C. Goodwin, James Griesemer, Paul Griffiths, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Evelyn Fox Keller, Gerd B. Muller, Eva M. Neumann-Held, Stuart A. Newman, Susan Oyama, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Sahotra Sarkar, Jackie Leach Scully, Gerry Webster, Ulrich Wolf
Voir
Publié par
Date de parution
27 janvier 2006
EAN13
9780822387336
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Genes in Development
A Series Edited by Barbara Herrnstein Smith
and E. Roy Weintraub
Genes
in
Development
R E - R E A D I N G
T H E MOL E C U L A R PA R A D I G M
Edited by
Eva M. Neumann-Held and
Christoph Rehmann-Sutter
Duke University Press
Durham and London
© Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Designed by C.H. Westmoreland
Typeset in Minion
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data appear on the last
printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully
acknowledges the support of the Swiss Academy
of Sciences, which provided funds toward
the production of this book.
Introduction - . -
IEmpirical Approaches
CONTENTS
1Genome Analysis and Developmental Biology: The Nematode Caenorhabditis elegansas a Model System .
2Genes and Form: Inherency in the Evolution of Developmental Mechanisms . .
IILooking Back into History
3From Genes as Determinants toas Resource: Historical Notes on Development and Genetics
IIITheorizing Genes
4The Origin of Species: A Structuralist Approach .
5On the Problem of the Molecular versus the Organismic Approach in Biology
6Genes, Development, and Semiosis
7The Fearless Vampire Conservator: Philip Kitcher, Genetic Determinism, and the Informational Gene .
8Genetics from an Evolutionary Process Perspective
9Genes—Causes—Codes: Deciphering’s Ontological Privilege . -
10Boundaries and (Constructive) Interaction
Contents
11Beyond the Gene but Beneath the Skin
12Poiesis and Praxis: Two Modes of Understanding Development -
IVSocial and Ethical Implications
13Developmental Emergence, Genes, and Responsible Science .
14Nothing Like a Gene
Contributors
Index
v i
. - -
I NTRODUCTI ON
In , on the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix, Carina Dennis and Philip Campbell, editors of a special issue ofNature, prefaced a collection of survey articles under the heading ‘‘The Eternal Molecule’’—a title that uses evocative religious language. This book is about the noneternal, changing understanding of thesignificanceof.Significancebelongs to the language of culture and subjectivity. None of the various views discussed here casts doubt on the notion thatis tremendously important for life on Earth. But the authors’ ideas of how its role should be represented, ex-plained, and evaluated differ considerably. This book explores central topics in ontology, philosophy of science and nature, and even ethics. Heredityis one aspect. Clearly, the sequence ofis crucial in some way for the transmission of form and characteristics to the next generation, and thus for evolutionary change as well. But shouldalways be viewed as the most significant component of transgenerational transmission and evolu-1 tionary change? Here,developmentmay be the key that helps us understand the role ofin heredity by clarifying its involvement in the processes of the construction of organisms. In recent years, the discussion of’s role and significance has been broadened by the attention paid to development. In contexts of research, public understanding, and societal applications of genetic knowledge the issue has been how much causal influence can be at-tributed toand how much is due to other factors, for example, epige-netic inheritance, environmental influences, and cultural effects. Those who have attributed too much significance toand too little to extra-fac-tors have been calledgene centrists(other names have been used, too, not all so polite); the other faction is sometimes referred to as thedevelopmen-talists. The debates between these and other less polarized positions will no doubt continue; the results from the Human Genome Project will certainly not settle them. Each new piece of information about a gene opens up new
Eva M. Neumann-Held and Christoph Rehmann-Sutter
questions about causal interactions with extragenetic contexts en route to the phenotype: What function doesperform within those processes that bring about the form and characters of the next generation? What is’s concrete agency within the differentiation of cells, or in organ formation? Hasany ‘‘agency’’ or ‘‘activity’’ at all (very anthropomorphic terms)? Is it not instead a passive store of differences, whose effects on the organ-ism are determined in very sophisticated ways by the cells—that is, by the organic context? What do the termscode, information, instruction, and so forth, really mean? Which contexts count? Which constellation of factors is most essential? Scientists have investigated the myriad details of the molecu-lar interactions and biochemical events that occur around; they have also discovered some of the core principles of regulation and organization. But questions about the basic theoretical concepts used in understanding and interpreting those results still are open and deserve attention. They are the topic of this book.
The relevance of these questions about the role ofin development reaches far beyond research itself. Since its origin, molecular biology, and particularly molecular genetics—symbolized by—has had controver-sial historical, cultural, and social impacts. It has undoubtedly changed our image of the composition, development, and evolution of living organisms on Earth and of the principles of life itself. It has joined the chorus of voices that describe us, our bodies, our identities, our fates. More than that, molecu-lar genetics has sometimes taken on a solo part. But beginning in the s, together with the discovery of the details of howworks in the context of the developing body, the words and melodies of that solo part started to di-verge. The images generated by the molecular approach to the development and heredity of organic life have become subject to reinterpretation. Even the ideas and metaphors about the role of the genes in development continue to evolve. Originally titled ‘‘Genes and Development,’’ the present title ‘‘Genes inDevelopment’’ shows that we came to see that our thinking encompasses both organic development and conceptual refinement. The genome has become a dominant theme of our time. And the genetic program, however critically discussed by scientists themselves, remains the most effective model for helping the public to understand genetics. Alterna-tive metaphors are lacking: contextual thinking has not yet discovered a nar-rative and metaphoric language of comparable power to talk of programs. In some of the discourses about social and societal impact the only remaining questions seem to be whether or not we should embrace the biotechnologi-
2
Introduction
cal possibilities opened up by our knowledge of, and what the conse-quences will be if we do so? The scientific path is often said to be clear, need-ing nothing but pragmatic realization, while the open questions are located in the realms of ethics or technology assessment. But there are other questions. They are hidden, so to speak, in Walter Gilbert’s famous imaginary compact disc, which contains the data of our three billionbase pairs and allows us to carry our personal genetic information in our pockets (Gilbert : ). What in fact would we have on such a? What would be its biological sig-nificance, its meaning for us? And how would people integrate the contents of theirs into their beliefs about the body, soul, time, the world, and so on?
We understand the termmolecular paradigmto mean the present strategy of research in the life sciences; that is, the study ofdevelopmental processes through the analysis and manipulation of molecular interactions at the level of gene regulation. A closer look at the scientific basis, however, reveals that even here the molecular paradigm, which explains wholes through molecu-lar parts and which often identifiesas the central determinant, is by no means generally accepted or unanimously construed. A suitable starting point for a critical review of the developments in molecular biology and de-velopmental genetics would therefore be the search for scientific alternatives to the molecular paradigm. If such alternatives exist, then it is most likely that their evaluation depends—at least in part—on the tools of the philoso-phy of science. There is no doubt that the research strategy of the molecular paradigm has been scientifically fruitful. Its aim—to integrate genetics and developmental biology (which had already engulfed the older discipline of embryology)— is not, however, the product of the latest advances in molecular biology. A synthesis between genetics and embryology was attempted in the first de-cades of the twentieth century, in the early history of modern genetics. At that time neither the conceptual nor the empirical tools for such an integra-tion existed. Thus, embryologists like Thomas Hunt Morgan turned away from embryology and devoted themselves to developing experimental genet-ics (see Morgan ). In the ensuing decades, new research objects (‘‘model organisms’’) and new theoretical tools became available and proved scientifi-cally successful, generating new research agendas and facilitating the design of new explanatory strategies. The methods of classical genetics were applied to mutant bacteria and bacteriophages by analyzing the mutant phenotype in terms of differences in the production of proteins such as enzymes. In the early s experimental evidence identified the biochemical molecule
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