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INCREASING COMPLEXITY. "The history of life is punctuated by evolutionary transitions which engender emergence of new levels of biological organization that involves selection acting at increasingly complex ensembles of biological entities." https://lnkd.in/d_h9CX2 View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL RELATIVITY. "Misconceptions arise because phenotypes are usually defined relative to possibilities that are not formulated explicitly. Our minds and our language often tend to confuse the objects whose variation is under consideration with the variation itself, and it is essential to remind that, in genetics, the objects of interest (e.g., a given genotype, an allele or a phenotype) deserve to be defined relatively to another reference state." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

THE RED HERRING. "For long some geneticists may have thought that they were dissecting the morphogenetic mechanisms underlying the formation of phenotypic traits, while their experimental approach were in fact uncovering genes whose absence or alteration (mutations, deletions, duplications, rearrangements, etc.) leads to phenotypic differences." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

SLEIGHT OF HAND. "Alfred Sturtevant formulated the question of the GP map in simple terms: “one of the central problems of biology is that of differentiation – how does an egg develop into a complex many-celled organism? That is, of course, the traditional major problem of embryology; but it also appears in genetics in the form of the question, How do genes produce their effects?” (GP = genotype-phenotype relationship). https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

MULTIFACTORIAL CONSEQUENCES. "A difference in hair color between two individuals could be due in some cases to their genetic difference. We note, however, that not all phenotypic changes can be attributed to genetic changes. A difference in hair color could also be caused by non-genetic factors such as age, intensity of solar radiation or hair dyeing, or by a combination of both genetic and non-genetic differences." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

ONLY A TOOL. "Nevertheless, genetic reductionism can be perfectly appropriate for identifying genetic loci where a change causes a phenotypic difference." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

PUSH TOWARDS COMPLEXITY. "Only increasing organizational complexity, e.g. emergence of multicellular aggregates, can prevent the collapse of the host–parasite system under the pressure of parasites." https://lnkd.in/d_h9CX2 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS the peek into radically new thinking about the relationship between genes and traits. The overused word wholistic applies here as never before: in an environmental context. No longer genes causing phenotypes due to their mutations and sequences; but rather, the impact of the ecosystem, non-inherited post-translational methylations of DNA, and the word of today, epigenetics, together with genes, cause the phenotype. We are not just governed by genes. View in LinkedIn

NEW PARADIGM. "The differential view of the GP relationship helps to clarify the genetic and environmental effects on phenotypes and their connection." (GP = genotype-phenotype relationship)." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

VAST SAMPLE. "Here we explicitly test the long term determinants of TE evolution by comparing 42 nematode genomes that span over 500 million years of diversification, and include numerous transitions between life history states and RNAi pathways." (TE = transposable elements). https://lnkd.in/drMDPh6 View in LinkedIn