[p2p-research] biofeminism

[Michel Bauwens]

see http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=621

Alessandro, Tom, could you eventually present this on our blog,

the interesting part starts here:


It is becoming clear that, as more work is carried out on deciphering the
human genome, certain impasses are emerging that can't be fully 'explained'
by Darwinistic mechanisms. Feminist perspectives, however, such as those
postulated by the Harvard scientist Evelyn Fox Keller, offer the potential
to open new possibilities for interpreting the principles of life and are
able to offer different perspectives on the nature of the organism.

Keller sought to rebel against the growing notion, prevelant around the time
of the sequencing of the human genome, that genes allegedly controlled all
aspects of development. Her contention was in regards to the central dogma
of the gene, and argued that the popular notion of a discreet unit of
biological 'code' did not exist in the way it was described. Keller proposed
that complex networks made the decisions about what parts of the genetic
code were actually expressed, not the 'genes', since DNA is unable to copy
itself on its own without the cooperation of other molecules, which are
under alternative, even more complex modes of instruction.

Which protein should a gene make, and under what circumstance? And how does
it choose? In fact, it doesn't. Responsibility for this decision lies
elsewhere, in the complex regulatory dynamics of the cell as a whole. It is
from these regulatory dynamics, and not from the gene itself, that the
signal (or signals) determining the specific pattern in which the final
transcript is to be formed actually comes.
[17]<http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=621#_edn17>

Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb characterise some of these alternative
mechanisms that regulate cell function by outlining four distinct
evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the development of organisms;
genetic, epigenetic (developmental), behavioural, and symbolic (linguistic).



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