Beyond Mendel: Researchers call for a new understanding of genetics

For more than a century, Mendelian genetics has shaped how we think about inheritance: one gene, one trait. It is a model that still echoes through textbooks—and one that is increasingly reaching its limits. In a perspective article published in the journal Genetics, an international group of leading geneticists and evolutionary biologists, including Detlef Weigel, Director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen and Luisa Pallares, Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen, calls for a fundamental shift in focus: away from searching for isolated, clearly defined gene effects and towards experimental approaches that treat genetic complexity not as noise, but as the starting point.