Genetic reductionism is the belief that understanding

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

s is sufficient to understand all aspects of

human behavior Human behavior is the potential and expressed capacity (Energy (psychological), mentally, Physical activity, physically, and Social action, socially) of human individuals or groups to respond to internal and external Stimulation, stimuli throu ...

. It is a specific form of

reductionism Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical positi ...

and of

biological determinism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, wheth ...

, based on a perspective which defines genes as distinct units of information with consistent properties. It also covers attempts to define specific phenomena in exclusively genetic terms, as in the case of the " warrior gene". The concept has been criticized by many biologists. According to Affifi (2017), "With the discoveries of

pleiotropy Pleiotropy () is a condition in which a single gene or genetic variant influences multiple phenotypic traits. A gene that has such multiple effects is referred to as a ''pleiotropic gene''. Mutations in pleiotropic genes can impact several trait ...

and

epistasis Epistasis is a phenomenon in genetics in which the effect of a gene mutation is dependent on the presence or absence of mutations in one or more other genes, respectively termed modifier genes. In other words, the effect of the mutation is depe ...

, cracks in the reductionist paradigm emerged even before the rise of

molecular biology Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

, but the full extent of the interdependency and flexible adaptivity of the

genome A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...

has really come to light in the past 10 years..." The genetic reductionist perspective can be appropriate when used to identify changes in specific genetic loci that cause differences in a given

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological propert ...

References

{{reflist, 30em Reductionism Human genetics