进化系统生物学将如何帮助理解适应性景观和突变效应的分布。

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53715, USA.

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2012;751:399-410. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3567-9_18.

Population genetics and ecology have been modeling biological systems quantitatively for over 8 decades and their results have contributed greatly to our understanding of the natural world and its evolution. Theories in these areas necessarily had to focus on comparisons of the contribution of different individuals to changes in the bigger picture at the expense of ignoring much of the complexity that exists inside individuals. Current systems biology provides new insights into this complexity within organisms. Here I review developments in evolutionary systems biology that have the potential to lead to a more unified approach that integrates contributions from current systems biology and population genetics. Central integrative concepts in this approach are the adaptive landscape and distributions of mutational effects. Both capture our understanding of the fitness of individuals and how it can change. Fitness is frequently used in population genetics to summarize key properties of individuals. Such properties emerge from the complexity of molecular processes within individuals, often in interaction with the environment. The general principles of this approach are reviewed here. This work can open up new avenues for computing critical quantities for models of long-term evolution, including epistasis, the distribution of deleterious mutational effects, and the frequency of adaptive mutations.

人口遗传学和生态学已经对生物系统进行了 80 多年的定量建模，其研究成果极大地促进了我们对自然世界及其演化的理解。这些领域的理论必然侧重于比较不同个体对更大图景变化的贡献，而忽略了个体内部存在的大量复杂性。当前的系统生物学为生物体内部的这种复杂性提供了新的见解。在这里，我回顾了进化系统生物学的发展，这些发展有可能导致一种更统一的方法，将当前的系统生物学和群体遗传学的贡献结合起来。这种方法的核心综合概念是适应性景观和突变效应分布。两者都能捕捉到我们对个体适应性的理解，以及它是如何变化的。适应性在群体遗传学中经常被用来概括个体的关键特性。这些特性源自个体内部分子过程的复杂性，通常与环境相互作用。本文回顾了这种方法的一般原理。这项工作可以为长期进化模型的计算关键数量开辟新的途径，包括上位性、有害突变效应的分布以及适应性突变的频率。