Sixty Years of a DNA World View

Over the last week, there have been several articles celebrating the passage of 60 years since James Watson and Francis Crick published their paper in Nature describing the double helical structure of the DNA molecule. It unleashed a genomic worldview and led to the central dogma of genetics and biology, the linear flow of cellular information from DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to RNA (ribonucleic acid) to protein within cells, which seemed elegant in its simplicity, captured the imagination of many and is by now enshrined in science. Ever since, largely through miscommunication by many parties, “there is a gene for condition xyz” has been taken to mean, “the gene causes xyz and the gene alone causes it.” This idea has trapped the general thinking on genetics in numerous ways, building an edifice for a molecule that supposedly unzips all by itself, self-replicates, has the blueprint for all the components of a single cell and organism, causes all diseases and defines all characteristics. Its power and hold are strong also because the idea and its implications fit like a glove within culturally...