Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome
Sarah S. Richardson is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, jointly appointed in the Department of the History of Science and the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome.
Hallam Stevens is Assistant Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics.
Sarah S. Richardson is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, jointly appointed in the Department of the History of Science and the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome.
Hallam Stevens is Assistant Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics.
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle?: Measuring the Environment in the Postgenomic Moment
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Published:April 2015
Sara Shostak, Margot Moinester, 2015. "The Missing Piece of the Puzzle?: Measuring the Environment in the Postgenomic Moment", Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome, Sarah S. Richardson, Hallam Stevens
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A hallmark of the postgenomic era is an imperative that scientists elucidate the role of the environment in shaping the processes and outcomes of gene action. This paper examines the efforts of scientists in two very different epistemological traditions to meet this challenge. Exposomics is an emergent postgenomic field that seeks to assess environmental exposures, from conception to death, and their effects inside the human body. The environment as made visible in exposomics contrasts with measurements of the environment in contemporary social epidemiological and sociological research on neighborhood effects on health. This comparison elucidates the unsettled conceptualizations and techniques of measuring the environment that characterize the postgenomic moment. Tensions between different disciplinary approaches to the environment—and whether or how they are resolved—are a central dynamic in the development of postgenomic knowledge production.
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