Some problems of biodiversity assessment at the genetic level: Genes and Genomes, or Genetics and Genomics?

Resumo

Biodiversity may be approached at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Whole genomes are intelligent information processing systems. We are progressing from a Constant Genome concept, subject to random, localized changes at a relatively constant mutation rate, to a Fluid Genome concept, subject to episodic, massive, and non-random reorganizations capable of producing new functional architectures. We discuss the demise of the gene concept, with particular reference to the Human Genome Project. We also question the undue reliance on the automatic sequencing f organic molecules for the understanding of the phenotype of organisms and of their genealogical relations. Under the molecular revolution the neo-Darwinian Genetic Theory of Evolution is inexorably giving way to a new, systemic, hierarchical, dynamic, organism and population-centered paradigm, Genomics or Phylogenomics. There is also much room for the expansion of microdiversity studies in the present to taxon and ecosystem-centered Macroevolutionary approaches in the full geological time dimension.