Tauber Alfred I
Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Perspect Biol Med. 2010 Spring;53(2):257-70. doi: 10.1353/pbm.0.0149.
Gilbert and Epel present a new approach to developmental biology: embryogenesis must be understood within the full context of the organism's environment. Instead of an insular embryo following a genetic blueprint, this revised program maintains that embryogenesis is subject to inputs from the environment that generate novel genetic variation with dynamic consequences for development. Beyond allelic variation of structural genes and of regulatory loci, plasticity-derived epigenetic variation completes the triad of the major types of variation required for evolution. Developmental biology and ecology, disciplines that have previously been regarded as distinct, are presented here as fully integrated under the rubric of "eco-devo," and from this perspective, which highlights how the environment not only selects variation, it helps construct it, another synthesis with evolutionary biology must also be made, "eco-evo-devo." This second integration has enormous implications for expanding evolution theory, inasmuch as the Modern Synthesis (Provine 1971), which combined classical genetics and Darwinism in the mid-20th century, did not account for the role of development in evolution. The eco-evo-devo synthesis thus portends a major theoretical inflection in evolutionary biology. Following a description of these scientific developments, comment is offered as to how this new integrated approach might be understood within the larger shifts in contemporary biology.
胚胎发生必须在生物体环境的完整背景下加以理解。与遵循基因蓝图的孤立胚胎不同，这一修订后的理论认为，胚胎发生会受到环境输入的影响，这些输入会产生新的基因变异，并对发育产生动态影响。除了结构基因和调控位点的等位基因变异外，可塑性衍生的表观遗传变异完善了进化所需的主要变异类型的三元组。发育生物学和生态学这两个以前被视为不同的学科，在这里被呈现为在“生态发育生物学”（eco-devo）的框架下完全整合在一起。从这个强调环境不仅选择变异，还帮助构建变异的角度来看，还必须与进化生物学进行另一种综合，即“生态-进化-发育生物学”（eco-evo-devo）。这种第二次整合对扩展进化理论具有巨大意义，因为20世纪中叶将经典遗传学和达尔文主义结合起来的现代综合理论（普罗文，1971年）没有考虑发育在进化中的作用。因此，生态-进化-发育生物学的综合预示着进化生物学的一个重大理论转折。在描述了这些科学进展之后，我们将评论这种新的综合方法如何在当代生物学的更大转变中得到理解。
