Molecular Epigenesis: Distributed Specificity as a Break in the Central Dogma

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (4):533 - 548 (2006)
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Abstract

The paper argues against the central dogma and its interpretation by C. Kenneth Waters and Alex Rosenberg. I argue that certain phenomena in the regulation of gene expression provide a break with the central dogma, according to which sequence specificity for a gene product must be template derived. My thesis of 'molecular epigenesis' with its three classes of phenomena, sequence 'activation', 'selection', and 'creation', is exemplified by processes such as transcriptional activation, alternative cis- and trans-splicing, and RNA editing. It argues that other molecular resources share the causal role of genes; the sequence specificity for the linear sequence of any gene product is distributed between the coding sequence, cis-acting sequences, trans-acting factors, environmental signals, and the contingent history of the cell (thesis of distributed causal specificity). I conclude that the central dogma has unnecessarily restricted genetic research to the sequencing of protein-coding genes, unilinear pathway analyses, and the focus on exclusive specificity

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Karola Stotz
Last affiliation: Macquarie University

Citations of this work

Human nature and cognitive–developmental niche construction.Karola Stotz - 2010 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (4):483-501.
Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory.Paul Edmund Griffiths & Karola Stotz - 2018 - In Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 225-245.
Agential Teleosemantics.Tiago Rama - 2022 - Dissertation, Autonomous University of Barcelona

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