Nijhout H Frederik, Riddiford Lynn M, Mirth Christen, Shingleton Alexander W, Suzuki Yuichiro, Callier Viviane
Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Dev Biol. 2014 Jan-Feb;3(1):113-34. doi: 10.1002/wdev.124. Epub 2013 Jul 25.
The mechanisms that control the sizes of a body and its many parts remain among the great puzzles in developmental biology. Why do animals grow to a species-specific body size, and how is the relative growth of their body parts controlled to so they grow to the right size, and in the correct proportion with body size, giving an animal its species-characteristic shape? Control of size must involve mechanisms that somehow assess some aspect of size and are upstream of mechanisms that regulate growth. These mechanisms are now beginning to be understood in the insects, in particular in Manduca sexta and Drosophila melanogaster. The control of size requires control of the rate of growth and control of the cessation of growth. Growth is controlled by genetic and environmental factors. Insulin and ecdysone, their receptors, and intracellular signaling pathways are the principal genetic regulators of growth. The secretion of these growth hormones, in turn, is controlled by complex interactions of other endocrine and molecular mechanisms, by environmental factors such as nutrition, and by the physiological mechanisms that sense body size. Although the general mechanisms of growth regulation appear to be widely shared, the mechanisms that regulate final size can be quite diverse.
控制生物体及其众多部分大小的机制仍然是发育生物学中的重大谜题之一。为什么动物会生长到特定物种的体型大小，以及它们身体各部分的相对生长是如何得到控制，从而使各部分生长到合适的大小，并与体型大小保持正确的比例，赋予动物其物种特有的形状？大小控制必然涉及到以某种方式评估大小的某些方面的机制，并且这些机制位于调节生长的机制的上游。现在，人们开始在昆虫中，特别是在烟草天蛾和黑腹果蝇中理解这些机制。大小控制需要对生长速率进行控制以及对生长停止进行控制。生长受遗传和环境因素的控制。胰岛素、蜕皮激素、它们的受体以及细胞内信号通路是生长的主要遗传调节因子。反过来，这些生长激素的分泌又受到其他内分泌和分子机制的复杂相互作用、营养等环境因素以及感知体型大小的生理机制的控制。尽管生长调节的一般机制似乎被广泛共享，但调节最终大小的机制可能会大不相同。
