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ABANDONING REDUCTIONISM. “Rather than returning along the same path in a constructionist approach that simply builds upon this knowledge, but in reverse, an alternative is to close the circle with synthetic constructions that seek to integrate the full complexity of biological and physiological systems (understanding the whole).” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1535370214564534 View in LinkedIn

WORK STILL TO DO. “Some of the most exciting ideas on viral evolution, such as the fourth-domain hypothesis, do not survive phylogenomic scrutiny. However, the emerging picture of virus evolution is hardly less remarkable.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

2500 YEARS OF BIOLOGY. “Our hermeneutic circle summarizes the course of experimental biology through 2500 years of the achievements of reductionist research (understanding the parts), which culminates in our ability to rapidly sequence the genome.” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1535370214564534 View in LinkedIn

ENGULFMENT REMAINS. “For all dsDNA viruses of eukaryotes, we can detect clear ancestry among viruses (and in some cases, plasmids) of bacteria, an observation that is compatible with the key role of the (proto)mitochondrial endosymbiont (and possibly other bacterial symbionts) in the evolution of eukaryotes.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

INTERPRETIVE THEORIES. “The new cover of Experimental Biology and Medicine features the hermeneutic circle of biology, a concept we have adapted from the hermeneutic principle that one understands the whole only in terms of each part and the parts only in terms of the whole.” https://lnkd.in/dgZEzC6 View in LinkedIn

EMERGING PRINCIPLES. “One such key principle is the unity of the evolutionary processes among viruses and capsid-less selfish elements. However, the equally fundamental, complementary principle is the evolutionary persistence of viral morphogenetic modules.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

ADMISSION OF EMERGENCE. “Interestingly, however, although he is a model example of the reductionist tradition and one of the fathers of Molecular Biology, Jacob does not rule out the possibility of emergent properties.” https://lnkd.in/drJfrU7 View in LinkedIn

EMERGING PARADIGM. “We are now close to having coherent scenarios for the evolution of all major groups of dsDNA viruses of eukaryotes and perhaps deciphering certain general principles of this evolution.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

NECESSARY TENSION. “Jacob is one of the fathers of modern Biology, and in his monumental work The Logic of Life he recounts the polarity that has always existed in biological science between analytical and synthetic traditions, between reductionism and holism.” https://lnkd.in/drJfrU7 View in LinkedIn

SWINGS AND PENDULUMS. “While system-centric studies in specific subfields of biology can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the mid-1990s that systems biology developed into a major counter-movement that would grow to challenge the reductionist approach.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn