In order to describe a cell at molecular level, a notion of a "gene" is neither necessary nor helpful. It is sufficient to consider the molecules (i.e., chromosomes, transcripts, proteins) and their interactions to describe cellular processes. The downside of the resulting high resolution is that it becomes very tedious to address features on the organismal and phenotypic levels with a language based on molecular terms. Looking for the missing link between biological disciplines dealing with different levels of biological organization, we suggest to return to the original intent behind the term "gene". To this end, we propose to investigate whether a useful notion of "gene" can be constructed based on an underlying notion of function, and whether this can serve as the necessary link and embed the various distinct gene concepts of biological (sub)disciplines in a coherent theoretical framework. In reply to the Genon Theory recently put forward by Klaus Scherrer and Jürgen Jost in this journal, we shall discuss a general approach to assess a gene definition that should then be tested for its expressiveness and potential cross-disciplinary relevance.

中文翻译：

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“基因”。

为了在分子水平上描述细胞，“基因”的概念既没有必要也没有帮助。考虑分子（即染色体、转录本、蛋白质）及其相互作用来描述细胞过程就足够了。由此产生的高分辨率的缺点是，使用基于分子术语的语言来解决生物体和表型水平上的特征变得非常乏味。寻找处理不同层次生物组织的生物学科之间缺失的联系，我们建议回归“基因”一词背后的初衷。为此，我们建议调查是否可以基于潜在的功能概念构建一个有用的“基因”概念，以及这是否可以作为必要的链接，并将生物（子）学科的各种不同的基因概念嵌入到一个连贯的理论框架中。作为对 Klaus Scherrer 和 Jürgen Jost 最近在本期刊中提出的 Genon Theory 的回复，我们将讨论评估基因定义的一般方法，然后应测试其表达能力和潜在的跨学科相关性。