Abstract

Analysis of two key ways of characterizing genes—as causes of phenotypic effects and as genomic DNA sequences—has yielded widespread pessimism that they can be united in a coherent gene concept. This raises important questions about the epistemology of genomic research: If analysis of a genome sequence cannot yield information about genes defined both in terms of their products and their DNA sequence, then what could we learn from it? I investigate basic tools of genomic analysis, argue that they do not reflect the application of either gene concept, and clarify how we learn from genomic research.