title: Distinguishing between "function" and "effect" in genome biology.
abstract: Much confusion in genome biology results from conflation of possible meanings of the word "function." We suggest that, in this connection, attention should be paid to evolutionary biologists and philosophers who have previously dealt with this problem. We need only decide that although all genomic structures have effects, only some of them should be said to have functions. Although it will very often be difficult or impossible to establish function (strictly defined), it should not automatically be assumed. We enjoin genomicists in particular to pay greater attention to parsing biological effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada ford@dal.ca.
authors.forename: W Ford
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Doolittle
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
authors.forename: Tyler D P
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Brunet
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Linquist
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: T Ryan
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Gregory
mesh_terms: D016678:Genome; D015894:Genome, Human; D023281:Genomics; D006801:Humans; D008840:Microfilament Proteins; D008967:Molecular Biology; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D009626:Terminology as Topic
chemical_list: D008840:Microfilament Proteins; C425471:TRIOBP protein, human
keywords: ENCODE project; causal role; functional genomics; selected effect