School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, United States.
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2013 Feb;66(2):569-74. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2012.07.031. Epub 2012 Aug 10.
Half a century ago, when the field of molecular evolution did not even exist, Morris Goodman analyzed profiles of immunological interactions between species and reached the following two remarkable conclusions: first, protein evolution slowed down in the human lineage compared to other primate lineages; second, this slowdown was more pronounced for proteins whose functions were likely to be neutral. It took several decades of research to fully grasp these ideas and document the pattern of hominoid rate slowdown. Along the way, studies of hominoid rate slowdown led to major progresses in understanding determinants of neutral molecular evolution, which in turn is used to calibrate rates of adaptive evolution. Furthermore, the growing knowledge on the origin of mutations provides a basis for understanding differential evolutionary rates between sex chromosomes and autosomes, which has deep implications for inferring human evolutionary histories, and other aspects of molecular evolution. Primate genomics in particular stand to provide critical information in these pursuits, due to the abundance of genomic data, relatively rich documentation of life history traits, and several model systems, including our own species.
半个世纪前,当分子进化领域甚至还不存在的时候,莫里斯·古德曼(Morris Goodman)分析了物种间免疫相互作用的特征,并得出了以下两个显著的结论:首先,与其他灵长类动物谱系相比,人类谱系中的蛋白质进化速度减缓;其次,对于那些功能可能是中性的蛋白质,这种减缓更为明显。这些观点的完全理解和同源物减缓模式的记录,花费了几十年的研究时间。在此过程中,对同源物减缓的研究导致了对中性分子进化决定因素的重要进展的理解,这反过来又被用于校准适应性进化的速率。此外,对突变起源的不断增长的认识为理解性染色体和常染色体之间的差异进化速率提供了基础,这对推断人类进化史和分子进化的其他方面具有深远的影响。灵长类动物基因组学在这些研究中尤其具有重要意义,因为其具有丰富的基因组数据、相对丰富的生活史特征记录以及包括我们自己的物种在内的几个模型系统。