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Qualitatively distinct phenotypes in the design space of biochemical systems
Author(s) -
Savageau Michael A.,
Fasani Rick A.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2009.10.073
Subject(s) - phenotype , biology , organism , repertoire , context (archaeology) , genotype , computational biology , genetics , genotype phenotype distinction , genome , gene , sequence space , space (punctuation) , evolutionary biology , computer science , mathematics , paleontology , physics , acoustics , pure mathematics , banach space , operating system
Although characterization of the genotype has undergone revolutionary advances as a result of the successful genome projects, the chasm between our understanding of a fully characterized gene sequence and the phenotypic repertoire of the organism is as broad and deep as it was in the pre‐genomic era. There are two fundamental unsolved problems that provide the context for the challenges in relating genotype to phenotype. We address one of these and describe a generic method for constructing a system design space in which qualitatively distinct phenotypes can be identified and counted, their relative fitness analyzed and compared, and their tolerance to change measured.