Jaeger Johannes, Laubichler Manfred, Callebaut Werner
EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, Spain ; Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain ; Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ USA ; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM USA ; Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA USA ; Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany ; The KLI Institute, Klosterneuburg, Austria.
Biol Theory. 2015;10(1):36-49. doi: 10.1007/s13752-015-0203-5. Epub 2015 Feb 17.
In a recent opinion piece, Denis Duboule has claimed that the increasing shift towards systems biology is driving evolutionary and developmental biology apart, and that a true reunification of these two disciplines within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) may easily take another 100 years. He identifies methodological, epistemological, and social differences as causes for this supposed separation. Our article provides a contrasting view. We argue that Duboule's prediction is based on a one-sided understanding of systems biology as a science that is only interested in functional, not evolutionary, aspects of biological processes. Instead, we propose a research program for an evolutionary systems biology, which is based on local exploration of the configuration space in evolving developmental systems. We call this approach-which is based on reverse engineering, simulation, and mathematical analysis-the natural history of configuration space. We discuss a number of illustrative examples that demonstrate the past success of local exploration, as opposed to global mapping, in different biological contexts. We argue that this pragmatic mode of inquiry can be extended and applied to the mathematical analysis of the developmental repertoire and evolutionary potential of evolving developmental mechanisms and that evolutionary systems biology so conceived provides a pragmatic epistemological framework for the EvoDevo synthesis.
在最近的一篇观点文章中，丹尼斯·杜布勒声称，向系统生物学的日益转变正在使进化生物学和发育生物学分道扬镳，而且在进化发育生物学（EvoDevo）框架内这两个学科真正重新统一可能很容易再需要100年时间。他将方法学、认识论和社会差异视为这种所谓分离的原因。我们的文章提出了一种截然不同的观点。我们认为，杜布勒的预测基于对系统生物学的片面理解，即认为系统生物学只是一门只对生物过程的功能而非进化方面感兴趣的科学。相反，我们提出了一个进化系统生物学的研究计划，该计划基于对不断进化的发育系统中构型空间的局部探索。我们将这种基于逆向工程、模拟和数学分析的方法称为构型空间的自然史。我们讨论了一些说明性例子，这些例子表明在不同生物背景下，与全局映射相反，局部探索过去取得了成功。我们认为，这种务实的探究模式可以扩展并应用于对不断进化的发育机制的发育指令库和进化潜力的数学分析，而且如此构想的进化系统生物学为EvoDevo综合提供了一个务实的认识论框架。
