ABSTRACT
Journalists, who pay reasonably close attention to what is happening in the science of genetics, are also aware that ideas about genes, genomes and gene action are changing. In genetics, there are powerful and indispensable theory constitutive metaphors which have shaped the history of molecular biology. Robert Pollack has also reflected at book length on whether the metaphor of DNA as a text invites the equivalent of literary criticism. The old metaphors for genes and genomes, whether they originate in scientific discourse or in popularisation or the rhetoric of research promotion, are familiar. John Avise, reflecting on the increasingly complex roles of transposable genetic elements in genomic evolution and regulation, has advocated both the social and ecological pictures. In the post-genomic era, however, there is no DNA sequence that exhibits any or all of these traits without the help of extensive and complex developmental machinery.
