For decades, we believed DNA held all the answers. But biologist Alfonso Martínez Arias offers a different view: «Genetics is simple, the problem is thinking it’s the answer to who we are».
In this live episode of «It's not that simple», recorded at the Salão Nobre of the University of Lisbon, the researcher from Pompeu Fabra University explains why the 21st century will be the century of the cell. Cells communicate, cooperate, and organize to form complex organisms and it’s in this interaction that the secret of life may lie.
Martínez Arias invites us to take a step back and look beyond the genome. The 20th century was the century of the gene: we discovered DNA and completed the human genome. But when the biologist observes the human body through the lens of its cells, he finds a different story.
According to him, «genes are mechanisms that cells use», and he compares them to IKEA tools: a hammer and screws are not enough to build a piece of furniture; you also need the plan, and that plan only the cells know.
From stem cell studies to organoids - small lab-grown replicas of human organs - Martínez Arias shows how biology is reshaping the way we understand development, disease, and even aging.
He believes this shift in focus, from genes to cells, will transform medicine. But could these new discoveries transform us too?
More on the topic
«The Master Builder: How The New Science Of The Cell Is Rewriting The Story Of Life», Alfonso Martínez Arias (John Murray Press)
«Elissa Epel: Genetics, chronic stress and ageing» (Science and Education Month, FFMS)
«Svante Pääbo: How genetics tells our human story» (Science and Education Month, FFMS)
«The Incompleteness of Evolution», with Alfonso Martínez Arias