Rethinking the Gene: From Replicator to Developmental Potential

Rethinking the Gene: From Replicator to Developmental Potential

In our recent exploration of memes, we moved beyond the idea of cultural replication and proposed a more relational view: memes are not self-contained replicators but constrained meaning potentials that are instantiated and individuated across social contexts. This shift invites a parallel question: can we rethink genes in the same way?

The gene, like the meme, has often been cast as a replicator—a discrete unit of inheritance, "selfishly striving" to preserve itself across generations. But just as memetics gains depth when we view it through a lens of meaning, context, and selection, genetics too can benefit from a developmental perspective. Rather than treating genes as autonomous agents of replication, we might instead approach them as elements of biological potential, instantiated in the material processes of cellular development and evolution.

From Replication to Instantiation

A gene, in itself, is not a thing that does. It is a sequence of possibilities—a structured potential for participation in processes of growth, differentiation, and adaptation. What a gene becomes in any instance depends on:

• The cellular context in which it is transcribed.

• The regulatory networks that activate or silence it.

• The organismal systems that integrate its effects.

• The environmental cues that constrain or afford its activation.

In this view, genes are not replicated in the narrow sense; they are instantiated through a dynamic process of selection, modulation, and integration. Each instance of gene activation is an actualisation of potential—a particular pathway taken among many latent possibilities.

The Ontology of Genetic Potential

We can apply here a relational ontology, in which the gene is not a self-contained unit but a relational entity: its meaning lies not in its internal sequence alone, but in its functional positioning within a larger biological system. In other words:

• The genome is a system of biological potential.

• Gene activation is instantiation within that system.

• Genetic individuation is the variation of instantiations across cells, tissues, and organisms.

This is not to deny the material specificity of genes. Rather, it is to insist that the specificity of DNA sequences does not equate to deterministic agency. Genes make available developmental possibilities; they do not dictate outcomes.

Individuation in the Genetic System

Just as memes are individuated across social users, genes are individuated across biological scales. A single gene may be instantiated differently:

• In different cell types within the same organism.

• In the same cell type under different developmental stages.

• In different organisms sharing a homologous sequence.

This means that genetic potential is not uniformly distributed. The relation between the genome of the cell, the organism, the population, and the species becomes a cline of individuation. The identity of the gene is not fixed by its sequence alone but by the way it participates in meaning-making processes of biological development.

Selection Without Replication

Natural selection still plays a central role—but in this framework, selection acts on instantiations, not on gene sequences abstracted from context. The "fitness" of a gene depends on how its potential is actualised in specific developmental and environmental circumstances. What persists is not a replicator per se, but a pattern of viable instantiations.

Over evolutionary time, certain potentials are reinforced—not because they are selfish, but because they are biologically workable within specific selection landscapes. This parallels our reframing of memes: what spreads is not a unit that copies itself, but a constrained potential whose instantiations prove viable across varied contexts.

Toward a Developmental Gene Ontology

This perspective invites a shift from the gene-as-replicator model to a gene-as-developmental-potential model. It aligns with systems biology, developmental biology, and epigenetics, all of which reveal genes as embedded participants in complex networks of interaction and interpretation.

Such a model opens up new questions:

• How do developmental contexts shape the individuation of genetic potential?

• How do systemic constraints act as selection pressures on instantiations?

• How might this framing help integrate genomic science with organismal and ecological perspectives?

By repositioning the gene within a relational, instantiational ontology, we move toward a richer view of life—not as a battle of replicators, but as a coordinated unfolding of potential across nested systems of meaning and materiality.