The new biology: beyond the Modern Synthesis
Michael R Rose1* and Todd H Oakley2
*Corresponding author: Michael R Rose mrrose@uci.edu
Author Affiliations
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697-2525 USA
2Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9610 USA
For all author emails, please log on.
Biology Direct 2007, 2:30 doi:10.1186/1745-6150-2-30
Received: 17 October 2007
Accepted: 24 November 2007
Published: 24 November 2007
© 2007 Rose and Oakley; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
The last third of the 20th Century featured an accumulation of research findings that severely challenged the assumptions of the "Modern Synthesis" which provided the foundations for most biological research during that century. The foundations of that "Modernist" biology had thus largely crumbled by the start of the 21st Century. This in turn raises the question of foundations for biology in the 21st Century.
Conclusion
Like the physical sciences in the first half of the 20th Century, biology at the start of the 21st Century is achieving a substantive maturity of theory, experimental tools, and fundamental findings thanks to relatively secure foundations in genomics. Genomics has also forced biologists to connect evolutionary and molecular biology, because these formerly Balkanized disciplines have been brought together as actors on the genomic stage. Biologists are now addressing the evolution of genetic systems using more than the concepts of population biology alone, and the problems of cell biology using more than the tools of biochemistry and molecular biology alone. It is becoming increasingly clear that solutions to such basic problems as aging, sex, development, and genome size potentially involve elements of biological science at every level of organization, from molecule to population. The new biology knits together genomics, bioinformatics, evolutionary genetics, and other such general-purpose tools to supply novel explanations for the paradoxes that undermined Modernist biology.
Open Peer Reviewers
This article was reviewed by W.F. Doolittle, E.V. Koonin, and J.M. Logsdon. For the full reviews, please go to the Reviewers' Comments section.
+++++
+++++
FREE PDF GRATIS [487 KB]
+++++
+++++
NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Achei interessante este parágrafo logo no início:
Achei interessante este parágrafo logo no início:
Dead parts of the Modern Synthesis
It is important to be clear about common, though not necessarily universal, assumptions of mid-20th Century biology that have been discarded. A partial listing would include at least the following:
• The genome is always a well-organized library of genes.
• Genes usually have single functions that have been specifically honed by powerful natural selection.
• Species are finely adjusted to their ecological circumstances due to efficient adaptive adjustment of biochemical functions.
• The durable units of evolution are species, and within them the organisms, organs, cells, and molecules, which are characteristic of the species.
• Given the adaptive nature of each organism and cell, their machinery can be modeled using principles of efficient design.
Fui, nem sei por que, rindo da cara de alguns cientistas da Nomenklatura científica, autores de livros didáticos de Biologia do ensino médio aprovados pelo MEC/SEMTEC/PNLEM, e da Galera dos meninos e meninas de Darwin que diziam que os comentários críticos que eu fazia aqui neste blog eram infundados, e que não havia crise nenhuma na teoria da evolução!
Mentirosos por Darwin, vocês foram apanhados de calças curtas, e eu estou sendo vindicado por cientistas evolucionistas HONESTOS!!!
Fui, nem sei por que, rindo da cara de alguns cientistas da Nomenklatura científica, autores de livros didáticos de Biologia do ensino médio aprovados pelo MEC/SEMTEC/PNLEM, e da Galera dos meninos e meninas de Darwin que diziam que os comentários críticos que eu fazia aqui neste blog eram infundados, e que não havia crise nenhuma na teoria da evolução!
Mentirosos por Darwin, vocês foram apanhados de calças curtas, e eu estou sendo vindicado por cientistas evolucionistas HONESTOS!!!
