Lamb Trevor D, Collin Shaun P, Pugh Edward N
Australian National University, Division of Neuroscience, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Garran Road, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2600, Australia.
Nat Rev Neurosci. 2007 Dec;8(12):960-76. doi: 10.1038/nrn2283.
Charles Darwin appreciated the conceptual difficulty in accepting that an organ as wonderful as the vertebrate eye could have evolved through natural selection. He reasoned that if appropriate gradations could be found that were useful to the animal and were inherited, then the apparent difficulty would be overcome. Here, we review a wide range of findings that capture glimpses of the gradations that appear to have occurred during eye evolution, and provide a scenario for the unseen steps that have led to the emergence of the vertebrate eye.
查尔斯·达尔文意识到,要接受像脊椎动物眼睛这样奇妙的器官能够通过自然选择进化而来,在概念上存在困难。他推断,如果能找到对动物有用且可遗传的适当渐变过程,那么这个明显的困难就能被克服。在此,我们回顾了一系列研究发现,这些发现让我们得以瞥见眼睛进化过程中似乎发生的渐变情况,并为导致脊椎动物眼睛出现的那些未知步骤提供了一种设想。