Every geneticist knows what they mean by a gene, but do they mean the same thing as the person they are talking to? Given that what a gene looks like depend on who is looking at it, a gene may well need to be defined (if at all) with respect to an observer. 

What a bioinformatician calls a gene may or may not coincide with what a biochemist or population biologist calls a gene. In some cases, all definitions of genes may hit the same thing, and in some cases they won’t. Biology, alas, will not be fit into boxes. 

Biologists have to learn to deal with the fact that few definitions are absolute, partly because we can’t agree on the important aspects, but also because reality is a mess. Every naturalist knows there is such a thing as a species, yet the only thing we can be certain of is that no one definition will draw a line around all those things that naturalists might want to call a species.


What is a gene for?
Lindell Bromham
Biol Philos (2016) 31:103–123

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