The role of two different but related graphs in the expansion of molecular biology between 1960 and 1980: the regulatory gene network and the intra-cellular signalling pathway

Michel Morange
Centre Cavailles, ENS

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     Last modified: June 15, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/15/2005 9:00 AM in ROZH 102
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Abstract
During the 1960-1980s, the new science of molecular biology expanded throughout all biological disciplines, substituting to some of them, taking power in others, or simply changing the research programs. This active phase of development was parallel to the introduction and diffusion of two new schematic representations, the regulatory gene network and the intra-cellular signalling pathways.
This communication aims at describing the origin and development of these new forms of representation; to discuss their relations through the study of oncogenesis; and to consider the role they had in the rapid expansion of molecular biology.

(To be included in the session organized by Sabine Brauckmann and Denis Thieffry: Aesthetics and explanatory power of biological graphs: evolutionary trees, fate maps, cell lineage, regulatory gene networks, etc. (1880-1980))

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
Representations as Thinking tools: satellite-DNA and laboratory practices
Visual Rhetoric and the Prion
Representing radioisotopes: experiments and instruments in the visualization of life sciences in the post-WWII era
What do we get from visual access?
Standardisation and abstraction: two ways to model Arabidopsis thaliana
Science and Representation: the case of genetic maps.