The Journal for Revelations in a Revolutionary Time Milton H. Saier, Jr. Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA Most theoretical and practical arenas of biological research are undergoing an upheaval. This condition was engendered by the genomics revolution, made possible by the biotechnological revolution. Reams of unfathomable data generated by genome sequencing gave birth to the molecular systematics revolution. Finally, biosystematics relies in part on the discipline of molecular phylogenetics which reveals evolutionary interrelationships between families of nucleic acids and proteins, thereby providing a reliable guide to structure, function and mechanism and allowing the rational distillation of principles from otherwise seemingly unrelated factual details.
Scientific revolutions provide the basis for conceptual and technical revelations.
Our emerging concept of the metabolon, for example, depicts a network of interconnected molecular entities that coordinate transmembrane transport with intercellular metabolism and respond to interorganismal and intercellular signalling in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. However, while these principles may be universal, prokaryotes have apparently evolved towards metabolic diversity, while higher eukaryotes have tended towards metabolic specialization. This dichotomy has promoted major differences between these two groups of organisms that are apparent even to the casual observer. Nevertheless, given genomic information, metabolic pathways and metabolic fluxes through them can be modeled for any organism using computational approaches that render biology a more or less precise predictive science. Regardless of organism or conditions, the wary scientist must be cognizant of and seek clues to the nature of unrevealed phenomena.