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NON-GENOMIC EFFECTS. “As many as 80 per cent of the knockouts in yeast are normally ‘silent’ in this way. Their functionality can be revealed only when the boundary conditions, such as the nutrient environment, are changed.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

MUTE KNOCKOUTS. “By contrast, the integral view for which I am arguing does not focus on differences. Instead it asks: what are all the functions to which the particular DNA sequence contributes? Indeed, it would not matter whether those functions are ones that result in a different phenotype. Through the existence of multiple back-up mechanisms, many DNA changes, such as knockouts, do not have a phenotypic effect on their own.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

SCALE VERSUS LEVEL. “If there is no privileged level of causation, then why should there be a privileged scale?” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

GOBSMACKING FACTOID. “The number of possible interactions between 25 000 genes exceeds the total number of elementary particles in the whole-known Universe, even when we severely restrict the numbers of gene products that can interact with each other.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

DEATH AND GENERATION OF COMPLEXITY. "Programmed cell death plays a central role in development, participating in particular in morphogenesis (the sculpting of the form of embryos), in sexual differentiation, and in the epigenetic self-organization processes that allow the emergence of the two most complex regulatory organs of our body, the immune system and the nervous system." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

"CELL SUICIDE plays an essential role in the maintenance of the genetic identity and the integrity of the body, by inducing the rapid elimination of altered cells." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DEATH PROMPTS. "At another level, each individual cell may be considered as a complex entity, a 'society' by itself, a mingling of heterogeneous organelles and components that behaves as a whole. And self-destruction can occur not only as a response to signals originating from the outside environment of the cell, but also from its inside environment." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY AND DEATH. "But the permanent coupling of each cell fate to the nature of the interactions it can establish with the collectivity to which it belongs, represents only one dimension of the 'social control' of cell survival and cell death." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

ADAPTIVE PLASTICITY OF SOMA. "This very frailty, this permanent reprieve and the interdependence they generate between our cells, are one of the bases of our perennity and our plasticity, allowing our bodies to build themselves, to constantly reconstruct, and to adapt to ever changing environments." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this reflection of Denis Nobel’s provocative thinking that rocks the boat of the central dogma of molecular biology and Neo-Darwinism. It is the nature of Khunian scientific revolutions that knowledge itself continues to evolve, often through a series of upheavals and periods of extreme resistance to new ideas. But in the end, per the adage, we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. View in LinkedIn