Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Curr Biol. 2010 Jan 26;20(2):R48-52. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.010.
How novel traits arise in organisms has long been a major problem in biology. Indeed, the sharpest critiques of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection often centered on explaining how novel body parts arose. In his response to The Origin of Species, St. George J. Mivart challenged Darwin to explain the origin of evolutionary novelties such as the mammary gland, asking if it was "conceivable that the young of any animal was ever saved from destruction by accidentally sucking a drop of scarcely nutritious fluid from an accidentally hypertrophied cutaneous gland of its mother?" It is only now that modern molecular and genomic tools are being brought to bear on this question that we are finally in a position to answer Mivart's challenge and explain one of the most fundamental questions of biology: how does novelty arise in evolution?
新特征是如何在生物中产生的，长期以来一直是生物学中的一个主要问题。事实上，对达尔文自然选择进化论最尖锐的批评往往集中在解释新的身体部位是如何产生的。在对《物种起源》的回应中，圣乔治·J·米瓦特（St. George J. Mivart）向达尔文提出挑战，要求他解释进化新特征的起源，如乳腺，他问道：“能否想象，任何动物的幼仔都曾因为偶然从母亲偶然肥大的皮肤腺中吮吸一滴几乎没有营养的液体而免于毁灭？”直到现在，现代分子和基因组工具才被应用于这个问题，我们终于能够回答米瓦特的挑战，并解释生物学中最基本的问题之一：新特征是如何在进化中产生的？
