Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California-Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA.
Evolution. 2009 Nov;63(11):2771-89. doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00761.x. Epub 2009 Jul 22.
Molecular genetic analysis of phenotypic variation has revealed many examples of evolutionary change in the developmental pathways that control plant and animal morphology. A major challenge is to integrate the information from diverse organisms and traits to understand the general patterns of developmental evolution. This integration can be facilitated by evolutionary metamodels-traits that have undergone multiple independent changes in different species and whose development is controlled by well-studied regulatory pathways. The metamodel approach provides the comparative equivalent of experimental replication, allowing us to test whether the evolution of each developmental pathway follows a consistent pattern, and whether different pathways are predisposed to different modes of evolution by their intrinsic organization. A review of several metamodels suggests that the structure of developmental pathways may bias the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution, and highlights phylogenetic replication as a value-added approach that produces deeper insights into the mechanisms of evolution than single-species analyses.
分子遗传分析表明，控制植物和动物形态的发育途径在进化过程中发生了许多变化。一个主要的挑战是整合来自不同生物和特征的信息，以了解发育进化的一般模式。通过进化超模型（metamodels）可以促进这种整合，这些超模型是指在不同物种中经历多次独立变化的特征，其发育受研究良好的调控途径控制。超模型方法提供了实验复制的比较等价物，使我们能够测试每个发育途径的进化是否遵循一致的模式，以及不同途径是否由于其内在组织而倾向于不同的进化模式。对几个超模型的回顾表明，发育途径的结构可能会影响表型进化的遗传基础，并强调系统发生复制是一种增值方法，比单一物种分析更深入地了解进化的机制。
