Pigliucci Massimo, Murren Courtney J
Department of Botany, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1100, USA.
Evolution. 2003 Jul;57(7):1455-64. doi: 10.1111/j.0014-3820.2003.tb00354.x.
The idea of genetic assimilation, that environmentally induced phenotypes may become genetically fixed and no longer require the original environmental stimulus, has had varied success through time in evolutionary biology research. Proposed by Waddington in the 1940s, it became an area of active empirical research mostly thanks to the efforts of its inventor and his collaborators. It was then attacked as of minor importance during the "hardening" of the neo-Darwinian synthesis and was relegated to a secondary role for decades. Recently, several papers have appeared, mostly independently of each other, to explore the likelihood of genetic assimilation as a biological phenomenon and its potential importance to our understanding of evolution. In this article we briefly trace the history of the concept and then discuss theoretical models that have newly employed genetic assimilation in a variety of contexts. We propose a typical scenario of evolution of genetic assimilation via an intermediate stage of phenotypic plasticity and present potential examples of the same. We also discuss a conceptual map of current and future lines of research aimed at exploring the actual relevance of genetic assimilation for evolutionary biology.
遗传同化的概念，即环境诱导的表型可能会在基因层面固定下来，不再需要原始的环境刺激，在进化生物学研究中，随着时间的推移取得了不同程度的成功。该概念由沃丁顿在20世纪40年代提出，主要归功于其发明者及其合作者的努力，它成为了一个活跃的实证研究领域。在新达尔文主义综合理论的“固化”过程中，它被抨击为重要性不大，并在几十年里被降格为次要角色。最近，几篇论文相继出现，大多彼此独立，探讨了遗传同化作为一种生物学现象的可能性及其对我们理解进化的潜在重要性。在本文中，我们简要追溯了这一概念的历史，然后讨论了在各种背景下新采用遗传同化的理论模型。我们提出了一个通过表型可塑性中间阶段实现遗传同化进化的典型场景，并给出了相关的潜在例子。我们还讨论了当前和未来研究方向的概念图，旨在探索遗传同化对进化生物学的实际相关性。
