Wang Wei, Su Bing, Wang Yi-Quan
College of Life Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
Yi Chuan. 2005 Jan;27(1):143-9.
The union of the two complementary disciplines, developmental biology and evolutionary biology resulted in a new division of evolutionary developmental biology, namely "Evo-Devo". Recently, the research on this field has been fruitful in understanding the origin and development of vertebrates. The cephalochordate amphioxus, which remains in relatively invariant morphology since the divergence from the vertebrate lineage, is the closest living relative to vertebrates. The vertebrate-like simple body plan and preduplicative genome provide amphioxus genes the privilege to serve as key landmark to understand morphological evolution. However, the amphioxus genome has not escaped evolution. In this paper several examples of independent gene (Hox; Evx; HNF-3 and Calmodulin-like) duplications in the cephalochordate lineage were summarized. These particularities and oddities remind the fact that amphioxus is not an immediate ancestor of the vertebrates but 'only' the closest living relative to the ancestor, with a mix of prototypical and amphioxus-specific features in its genome.
发育生物学和进化生物学这两个互补学科的结合产生了进化发育生物学的一个新分支，即“进化发育生物学（Evo-Devo）”。最近，该领域的研究在理解脊椎动物的起源和发育方面成果丰硕。头索动物文昌鱼自与脊椎动物谱系分化以来，形态相对保持不变，是现存与脊椎动物亲缘关系最近的物种。类似脊椎动物的简单身体结构和未重复的基因组，使文昌鱼基因有资格作为理解形态进化的关键标志。然而，文昌鱼基因组也未能逃脱进化。本文总结了头索动物谱系中几个独立基因（Hox；Evx；HNF-3和类钙调蛋白）重复的例子。这些特殊性和奇特之处提醒我们，文昌鱼并非脊椎动物的直接祖先，而“仅仅”是与祖先亲缘关系最近的现存物种，其基因组兼具原型特征和文昌鱼特有的特征。
