Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University.
Genome Biol Evol. 2011;3:812-29. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evr028.
One of the most important problems in evolutionary biology is to understand how new species are generated in nature. In the past, it was difficult to study this problem because our lifetime is too short to observe the entire process of speciation. In recent years, however, molecular and genomic techniques have been developed for identifying and studying the genes involved in speciation. Using these techniques, many investigators have already obtained new findings. At present, however, the results obtained are complex and quite confusing. We have therefore attempted to understand these findings coherently with a historical perspective and clarify the roles of mutation and natural selection in speciation. We have first indicated that the root of the currently burgeoning field of plant genomics goes back to Hugo de Vries, who proposed the mutation theory of evolution more than a century ago and that he unknowingly found the importance of polyploidy and chromosomal rearrangements in plant speciation. We have then shown that the currently popular Dobzhansky-Muller model of evolution of reproductive isolation is only one of many possible mechanisms. Some of them are Oka's model of duplicate gene mutations, multiallelic speciation, mutation-rescue model, segregation-distorter gene model, heterochromatin-associated speciation, single-locus model, etc. The occurrence of speciation also depends on the reproductive system, population size, bottleneck effects, and environmental factors, such as temperature and day length. Some authors emphasized the importance of natural selection to speed up speciation, but mutation is crucial in speciation because reproductive barriers cannot be generated without mutations.
进化生物学中最重要的问题之一是了解自然界中是如何产生新物种的。过去，由于我们的寿命太短，无法观察到物种形成的整个过程，因此很难研究这个问题。然而，近年来，已经开发出了用于识别和研究物种形成过程中涉及的基因的分子和基因组技术。利用这些技术，许多研究人员已经获得了新的发现。然而，目前获得的结果复杂且令人困惑。因此，我们试图从历史角度来理解这些发现，并阐明突变和自然选择在物种形成中的作用。我们首先指出，当前蓬勃发展的植物基因组学领域的根源可以追溯到一个多世纪前提出进化突变理论的 Hugo de Vries，他无意识地发现了多倍体和染色体重排在植物物种形成中的重要性。然后我们表明，目前流行的 Dobzhansky-Muller 生殖隔离进化模型只是许多可能机制之一。其中一些是 Oka 的复等位基因突变模型、多等位基因物种形成、突变拯救模型、分离歪曲基因模型、异染色质相关物种形成、单基因座模型等。物种形成的发生还取决于生殖系统、种群大小、瓶颈效应以及环境因素，如温度和日照长度。一些作者强调了自然选择在加速物种形成中的重要性，但突变在物种形成中至关重要，因为没有突变就无法产生生殖障碍。
