Reductionism in molecular biology- ARTICLE Hypothesis- 16 ARTICLE Stamp-Collecting in the Post-“Omic ” Playground

“My own scientific career was a descent from higher to lower dimension, led by the desire to understand life. I went from animals to cells, from cells to bacteria, from bacteria to molecules, from molecules to electrons. The story had its irony, for molecules and electrons have no life at all. On my way life ran out between my fingers. ”-Albert Szent-Gyorgi, The Living State, Academic Press, 1972 As we work out intricate details regarding protein-protein interactions and discover how genes are regulated in specific cellular environments, are we tending towards a better understanding of the cell? Or are we merely stamp-collecting, mindlessly cataloguing useless details of cell function? Like Szent-Gyorgi in the quote above, most molecular biologists work according to a reductionist paradigm. Reductionism is any theory or method that seek