GENES AND GENETIC AGENCY

Genes are agents crucial to the existence of many biological processes. It has long been taken for granted that genes are the biological agents of heredity, and they are the principal agents within genetics and its various subdivisions – developmental, population, molecular. Yet the term “genetics” was introduced by the biologist William Bateson in 1906 as the name of the emerging field studying “the physiology of Descent, with implied bearing on the theoretical problems of the evolutionist and the systematist, and the application to the practical problems of breeders,” three years before William Johannsen coined “gene” to refer to the basic unit of heredity. Thus, genetics has not always been simply the study of genes. And, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 7, some recent approaches give genes a more circumscribed role in the processes of inheritance and development than they have traditionally had. In this chapter and the next we will explore the nature of genetic agency within the various areas of genetics, and reflect on what, if anything, justifies the privileged role that the gene has traditionally played in the study of inheritance and the transmission of phenotypic traits across generations.

In the last fifty years, the concept of genetic agency has become integral to much thinking in biology beyond the disciplinary confines of genetics.