Enabling technologies drive the diversification and re-interpretation of gene concept in animal science - a review

The concept of the gene was originally developed in the field of classical genetics, and can be traced back to Mendel. Mendel defined a paradigm of particle-based heredity that has been subsequently . developed for 150 years. However, Mendel's proposals lacked details (reflecting contemporary technological limitations). In the 20th century, enabling experimental technologies frequently drove the development of gene concept in a bottom-up manner. 'Ills was the case for technologies such as the microscope, X-ray crystallography, recombinant DNA, Sanger sequencing, and automatic sequencers. In the first two decades of the 21th century, gene concept was further diversified by innovative genomic technologies (e.g. next generation sequencing or single-cell omics) and associated computational methods developed for analysis of resulting datasets. Presently, machine learning and deep learning transform genetics into a data science (with considerable impact on animal science). Old arguments about the assumptions and implications of the Mendelian paradigm re-emerge in the context of the annotation of genomes of farm animals, genomic prediction of commercial traits, meta-gnomics of gut microbiomes, and other applications of genomics and computational methods in animal science.