Francisco Prosdocimi
The teleological though is a well-known misunderstanding of evolutionary biology and it is frequently understood as the vision that organs, species (and genes) have evolved to achieve specific ends. The theory of evolution as predisposed by Charles Darwin is based on differential reproduction of randomly produced variants with no direction. This commentary intend to look into molecular genetics and genomics trying to point out major evolutionary conceptual problems on naming genes according to their most likely, first-described function. Naming genes in accord to their function may lead to misunderstandings and finalistic thoughts assumptions that genes might have “evolved for” accomplishing that function. Besides, the idea that a gene would be responsible for a single and unique function in the cellular environment became over simplistic. We now accept that genes have multiple splicing variants, messenger RNAs can attach multiple molecules in the cytoplasm, proteins have multiple sites of recognition by the immune system (epitopes), interact with many other proteins and most genes present regulatory roles in the cell metabolism. Gene name databases and biological ontologies consist in a powerful repositoire of gene characteristics and will certainly help further studies of gene systematics and taxonomy. Genes should be considered free-living entities evolving by the processes of natural selection and self-organization that cannot foresee functions to evolve for. Here I discuss the intellectual teleological background behind naming genes based on their functions and suggest new approaches for gene naming and classification in the future.
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