Where is biology heading?
In this century genetic research will become almost synonymous with the efforts to understand the functional expression of genes within the context of integrated biological systems. We are finally in position to start revealing the causal links between genotype and phenotype in the wide sense. To achieve this, genetics will be forced to become much more inter-disciplinary and theoretically inclined. In this process its statistical, mathematical and computational tools will become substantially more sophisticated, and conceptual and methodological apparatuses, which are today almost totally separated, will become much more integrated.
Motivation for the term "integrative"
We make use of the term integrative because it quite accurately describes the transition genetics is currently undergoing, namely
• Integration of experimental and theoretical approaches in concrete research programmes;
• Integration of processes and mechanisms connecting genotypic data with phenotypic data (in the wide sense) in a coherent mechanistic explanatory structure;
• Integration of the explanatory frameworks of nonlinear system dynamics and statistics.
