the gene is obsolete...,

psmag | In the aftermath of the Human Genome Project, biologists are struggling with the definition of a gene, but why should this matter to anyone else? It matters because the molecular concept of the gene that has dominated biomedical research for the last half-century is increasingly ill-suited for our efforts to understand the role of genetics in human biology. Giving a physical meaning to the concept of a gene was a triumph of 20th-century biology, but as it turns out, this scientific success hasn’t solved the problems we hoped it would.

The Human Genome Project was conceived as part of a research program to develop a set of clear molecular explanations for our biology. The idea was to inventory all of our genes and assign each of them a function; with this annotated inventory in hand, we would possess a molecular explanation of our genetic underpinnings and discover druggable target genes for specific diseases. While this gene-focused approach has been successful in many cases, it’s increasingly clear that we will never understand the role of genetics in our biology by merely making an annotated inventory of those DNA entities that we call genes.

Life isn’t so simple, and perhaps Wilhelm Johannsen’s more agnostic definition of a gene is a better match to the mixed bag of genetic elements in our genomes. The molecular concept of a gene was supposed to explain the influence of our DNA on our biology, our behaviors, and our ailments. That explanation is much more elusive than we hoped, and the role of DNA in our lives is more complex and subtle than we expected.