Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos, IFISC (CSIC-UIB), Campus Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
BMC Evol Biol. 2011 Jun 6;11:155. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-11-155.
One of the classical questions in evolutionary biology is how evolutionary processes are coupled at the gene and species level. With this motivation, we compare the topological properties (mainly the depth scaling, as a characterization of balance) of a large set of protein phylogenies with those of a set of species phylogenies.
The comparative analysis between protein and species phylogenies shows that both sets of phylogenies share a remarkably similar scaling behavior, suggesting the universality of branching rules and of the evolutionary processes that drive biological diversification from gene to species level. In order to explain such generality, we propose a simple model which allows us to estimate the proportion of evolvability/robustness needed to approximate the scaling behavior observed in the phylogenies, highlighting the relevance of the robustness of a biological system (species or protein) in the scaling properties of the phylogenetic trees.
The invariance of the scaling properties at levels spanning from genes to species suggests that rules that govern the incapability of a biological system to diversify are equally relevant both at the gene and at the species level.
进化生物学中的一个经典问题是进化过程如何在基因和物种水平上相互关联。受此启发，我们比较了大量蛋白质系统发育树和物种系统发育树的拓扑性质（主要是深度标度，作为平衡的特征）。
蛋白质系统发育树和物种系统发育树之间的比较分析表明，这两组系统发育树具有非常相似的标度行为，表明分支规则和推动从基因到物种水平的生物多样化的进化过程具有普遍性。为了解释这种普遍性，我们提出了一个简单的模型，该模型允许我们估计接近系统发育树中观察到的标度行为所需的可进化性/稳健性的比例，突出了生物系统（物种或蛋白质）的稳健性在系统发育树的标度性质中的重要性。
从基因到物种的各级别标度性质的不变性表明，控制生物系统不能多样化的规则在基因和物种水平上同样重要。
