Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Bioessays. 2010 May;32(5):438-49. doi: 10.1002/bies.200900175.
Over the past decade, it has been discovered that disparate aspects of morphology - often of distantly related groups of organisms - are regulated by the same genetic regulatory mechanisms. Those discoveries provide a new perspective on morphological evolutionary change. A conceptual framework for exploring these research findings is termed 'deep homology'. A comparative framework for morphological relations of homology is provided that distinguishes analogy, homoplasy, plesiomorphy and synapomorphy. Four examples - three from plants and one from animals - demonstrate that homologous developmental mechanisms can regulate a range of morphological relations including analogy, homoplasy and examples of uncertain homology. Deep homology is part of a much wider range of phenomena in which biological (genes, regulatory mechanisms, morphological traits) and phylogenetic levels of homology can both be disassociated. Therefore, to understand homology, precise, comparative, independent statements of both biological and phylogenetic levels of homology are necessary.
在过去的十年中，人们发现形态学的不同方面——通常是远缘生物群体的形态学方面——受到相同的遗传调控机制的调控。这些发现为形态进化变化提供了一个新的视角。一个用于探索这些研究结果的概念框架被称为“深度同源性”。提供了一个用于同源形态关系的比较框架，区分了相似性、同功性、祖征和共征。四个例子——三个来自植物，一个来自动物——表明同源发育机制可以调节一系列形态关系，包括相似性、同功性和不确定同源性的例子。深度同源性是更广泛的现象的一部分，在这些现象中，生物（基因、调控机制、形态特征）和系统发育同源性的水平都可以脱钩。因此，要理解同源性，有必要对生物和系统发育水平的同源性进行准确、比较和独立的陈述。
