02 February 2023, Hesse, Marburg: A press spokeswoman points to a plasmid model at the Görzhausen I ... [+] Biontech site. Photo: Sebastian Christop

A New Dogma Of Molecular Biology: A Paradigm Shift

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2024-12-04 18:00:08

02 February 2023, Hesse, Marburg: A press spokeswoman points to a plasmid model at the Görzhausen I ... [+] Biontech site. Photo: Sebastian Christoph Gollnow/dpa (Photo by Sebastian Christoph Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Thomas Kuhn, in his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, described a paradigm shift in science as a new understanding of nature that:

This is precisely the nature of our new understanding of biology, which has occurred over the past twenty years and is now sufficiently advanced to offer a new paradigm.

The theory holds that Gregor Mendel's concept of a gene (a discrete heritable trait or phenotype) is the consequence of a change in the text of DNA that alters the function of a protein and, therefore, the phenotype. Sickle cell anemia is a prime example. A single-letter change in the DNA that encodes the hemoglobin protein changes the structure of the protein so that it aggregates to create sickle-shaped red blood cells, leading to the blood clots that define the disease. While true, we now view this paradigm as a special case of a broader reality. Why?

Over the past twenty years, we have made impressive progress in reading the complete genome sequences of hundreds of thousands of humans and tens of thousands of other species. We have uncovered countless variations among individuals in their inherited DNA sequence and associated those changes with thousands of inherited traits, including inherited diseases.