Doing justice to allosteric regulation

Abstract

Jacques Monod gave us not only our first regulatory system, but also our first smart molecules - i.e., he gave us allosteric proteins. But both of these contributions hung in a certain tension with his primary commitments. In particular, I focus here on the ways in which his ontological commitments constrained his thinking about the power of allostery. Although he wrote that "so far as regulation through allosteric interaction is concerned, everything is possible", for him, not everything was conceivable. In particular, what was not conceivable was a challenge to the primacy of DNA.

Keywords: Allostery; Allostérie; Engagement ontologique; Invariance; Ontological commitment; Teleonomy; Téléonomie.