Genetics, systems, and alcohol.

Under a variety of rubrics (e.g., complexity, self-constructing systems, dissipative structures), interest has recently burgeoned in applying principles of complex systems to a wide variety of scientific issues. A major concern is with emergent properties of systems not derivable from the properties of components of the systems. In this paper, some elementary aspects of "systems" considerations are applied to phenomena of alcohol pharmacogenetics. It is likely that whole new families of informative phenotypes can be generated by this approach.