Why environmental disease research needs a new framework: Disease as a phenotype of evolutionary information management

Growing concerns about genetic determinism across biological research have intensified as complexity and uncertainty become impossible to ignore, and the study of environmental diseases is no exception. For decades, research has focused predominantly on specific genetic factors, whereas environmental dynamics have often been simplified, treated as constants, or rendered effectively invisible in experimental design and data interpretation. Although such simplification produces cleaner datasets and more “coherent” narratives, it obscures the biological reality in which organisms continually interact with, and are shaped by, changing environments. To advance this discussion, we introduce a broader evolutionary and systems –level perspective grounded in Genome Architecture Theory, including the distinction between genome-mediated macroevolution and gene-mediated microevolution, together with the emerging framework of evolutionary information management. These concepts highlight that disease cannot be fully understood through isolated molecular mechanisms alone; rather, it must be viewed as a dynamic phenotype shaped by stress responses, genome reorganization, and system-level information processes. We therefore call for a rethinking of environmental disease research, specifically, a redefinition of inheritance, environments, evolution, and disease – leading to a shift from narrowly defined molecular causation to an evolutionary – information framework that captures the full interplay between environmental stressors, genome reconfiguration, gene/epigenetic modification, and system-level adaptation.