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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

CLUMSY TOOLS. “While I think we can be certain that multi-level causation with feedbacks between all the levels is an important feature of biological organisms, the tools we have to deal with such causation need further development.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

THE UNIMAGINABLE. “We may need to think the unimaginable in order fully to understand the multi-scale nature of biology. The concept of scale is, after all, deeply connected to our conception of space–time.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

SCALE MATTERS. “These are practical reasons why the equations we use are scale-dependent. The formal theory of scale relativity goes much further since it proposes that it is theoretically necessary that the differential equations should be scale-dependent.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

MACRO TO MICRO. “The equations for structure and for the way in which elements move and interact in that structure in biology necessarily depend on the resolution at which it is represented.” 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