Abstract

Throughout the history of genetics, the concept of the gene has been a hot topic. Theories of the gene as a coherent structured particle, a large molecule, or part of such molecule, were prominent from the 1920s until well after the discovery of DNA structure and its function in the production of proteins in the 1950s and 1960s. As knowledge of the material basis of heredity advanced, new and more sophisticated definitions were proposed (see, for example, Gerstein et al. 2007; Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2012). But rapid growth of knowledge about the molecular basis of biological heredity and individual development during the last half-century has made the idea of a particulate “gene” more and more elusive. Or ..