Savageau M A
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-0620.
New Biol. 1991 Feb;3(2):190-7.
In the editorial inaugurating this journal, Levine (1989) pointed to a new reductionism in biology, which--unlike the old reductionism that led to specialization and isolation of areas concerned with different aspects of a complex biological problem--is providing a renewed sense of unity. This development is the result of widespread use of common experimental methodology and the emergence of signal transmission and differential gene expression as themes that are central to many areas of modern biology. I describe here a set of complementary developments in molecular biology that focus attention on the problems of complexity and organization. Simple examples are given that illustrate the difficulty of relating systemic behavior to the properties of the underlying molecular determinants, and the outlines of a general approach to this problem are presented. These developments, together with those highlighted by Levine, are leading us to a new, more integrative intellectual paradigm whose fruits will be the elucidation of fundamental issues concerning network function, design, and evolution that cannot be addressed by the current paradigm.
在为本期刊创刊撰写的社论中，莱文（1989年）指出生物学领域出现了一种新的还原论，与导致复杂生物学问题不同方面相关领域专业化和孤立化的旧还原论不同，这种新还原论正在带来一种新的整体感。这一发展是广泛使用通用实验方法以及信号转导和差异基因表达作为现代生物学许多领域核心主题出现的结果。我在此描述分子生物学中的一系列互补性发展，这些发展将注意力集中在复杂性和组织问题上。文中给出了一些简单例子，说明将系统行为与潜在分子决定因素的特性联系起来的困难，并提出了解决这一问题的一般方法概述。这些发展，连同莱文所强调的那些，正引领我们走向一种新的、更具综合性的知识范式，其成果将是阐明当前范式无法解决的有关网络功能、设计和进化的基本问题。
