The Century of the Gene

According to Keller, that reductionist concept dominated the science of heredity in the twentieth century, her 'century of the gene'. In each of her.
Table of contents

Conclusion , What are Genes for?

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Chapters First Challenge Indelible concepts. The life of a powerful word: This means that there is a pervasive and popular belief in the dominance of nature, meaning genes determining an organism's "fate" or people's characters, despite the near absence of supporting evidence for the nature side of the "nature vs.

I read an acknowledgment of the limitations of the most extreme forms of reductionism that had earlier held sway". Chapter 1, Motors of Stasis and Change: The regulation of Genetic Stability. The history of science is replete with irony, and the aftermath of Watson and Crick's tour de force offers no exception. As everyone knows Stent could not have been more wrong. Molecular biology's course after was anything but a decline. Stupendous as the model is for its beautiful structure; the illusion of knowledge it conveys can obscure the characteristics we must explicitly know are missing from deoxyribonucleic acid.

T his widespread scientific agreement was that by reducing a set of complex processes to its component parts researchers would reveal greater clarity and discover underlying causes for the way the parts function as they contribute to an integral whole. Simplicity of form and function was supposed to emerge as one moved from the cellular to the chromosomal level. After and , though there were skeptics before the deciphering of the double helix , further discoveries about proteins, ribonucleic acid RNA and cellular functions undermined the "reductionist" approach around which two beliefs were central to the consensus in microbiology: A schematic representation of genes along the X chromosome the name [CAPS] of the gene and what it is associated with.

The scientific consensus that one gene equals one trait began to unravel quickly after the discovery of the structure of DNA.

The Century of the Gene

From their studies of bacterial adaptation, they concluded that an understanding of the biosynthesis of proteins requires the assumption that chromosomes house more than one kind of gene The consequence of this unraveling consensus was that the simplicity of the cell was shattered, the role of RNA in altering DNA in retroviruses such as leukemia and acquired immune deficiency syndrome AIDS helped dismantle a reductionist approach, and eventually the gene, as a concept, emerged as both a decoding process and a cluster of protein mediated responses to changing cellular conditions. Larger context of these dates.

The proteins that are the phenotypes are made of the following amino acids from specific groups of three nitrogen-base pairs: K eller's main point is?

Chapters Second set of Challenges Indelible concepts. What does a gene do? How i s elementary life an oxymoron? Because single-celled life is more complicated than we may be able to imagine. Geneticists "needed to explain how it is that the unit of heredity, as de Vries had earlier put it , 'impresses its character upon the cell. But what a formidable task!

The problem of gene structure was challenging enough.

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But the problem of gene function was more challenging by far; indeed to many biologists, an answer to the question of how structure could translate into function seemed so difficult to imagine as to defy reason. It makes and enzyme. A gene "encodes" a protein [enzyme, hormone neurotransmitter].

How could the structure of the gene be translated into the function of the gene? They "succeeded in tying specific mutations to the failure of specific steps in a metabolic pathway. This they argued demonstrated that genes control biochemical reactions. Genes as conceived by 20th century scientists have a dual responsibility that DNA could fulfill.

Preserve genetic memory through the generations fidelity ,. In each generation to steer the course of individual development adaptability. Central dogma is that DNA is translated by RNA carried from the nucleus into the surrounding cell and the mRNA in the Endoplasmic Reticulum codes for protein building, or strings together the amino acids and constructs a protein. Ribosomes in the endoplasmic reticulum. The term operator refers to yet another genetic element, one that is equally critical to regulation even though it has not yet been called a gene.

The discovery of a new class of genetic elements, the regulator genes, which control the rate of synthesis of proteins, the structure of which is governed by other genes, does not contradict the classical concept, but it does greatly widen the scope and interpretive value of genetic theory. Four possible means for generating variability by operon splicing.

But doing so means that we have to give up on the notion, even for structural genes, that one gene makes one enzyme or protein. One gene can be employed to make many different proteins. Which protein should the gene make, and under what circumstances? Those who have read books by Evelyn Fox Keller may have already noticed her engagement with the issue of the interrelationships between [End Page ] language and science.

These interrelationships have formed the context for her discussions of a wide variety of topics, including scientific biography, the role of gender in science, evolution, and molecular biology. Simultaneously a history and a critical analysis of a discipline, the book tackles the main issues in modern genetics and genomics, looking at such fundamental questions as the form and function of genes and their relationship to building an organism. As with her other books, this one is quite brief, and as always, its brevity should not mislead readers. In science, as in fashion, elegance lies in understatement, a weapon that Keller wields with great facility.

The price paid for such sophistication is accessibility; this book is not for the casual layperson or even a novice student hoping for a quick course in genetics.

E. F. Keller, The Century of the Gene, Notes on the entire text.

It should be noted also that, for all her arguments about the inadequacies of the word and its connotations, not once does Keller offer an alternative. If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'. View freely available titles: Book titles OR Journal titles.