GQE-Le Moulon, INRAE, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Genetica. 2022 Aug;150(3-4):153-158. doi: 10.1007/s10709-021-00134-6. Epub 2021 Nov 5.
Even though the word "phenotype", as well as the expression "genotype-phenotype relationship", are a part of the everyday language of biologists, they remain abstract notions that are sometimes misunderstood or misused. In this article, I begin with a review of the genesis of the concept of phenotype and of the meaning of the genotype-phenotype "relationship" from a historical perspective. I then illustrate how the development of new approaches for exploring the living world has enabled us to phenotype organisms at multiple levels, with traits that can either be measures or parameters of functions, leading to a virtually unlimited amount of phenotypic data. Thus, pleiotropy becomes a central issue in the study of the genotype-phenotype relationship. Finally, I provide a few examples showing that important genetic and evolutionary features clearly differ with the phenotypic level considered. The way genotypic variation propagates across the phenotypic levels to shape fitness variation is an essential research program in biology.
尽管“表型”一词以及“基因型-表型关系”的表述已经成为生物学家日常语言的一部分，但它们仍然是抽象的概念，有时会被误解或误用。在本文中，我首先从历史的角度回顾了表型概念的起源以及基因型-表型“关系”的含义。然后，我说明了探索生命世界的新方法的发展如何使我们能够在多个层次上对生物体进行表型分析，这些特征可以是功能的度量或参数，从而产生几乎无限数量的表型数据。因此，多效性成为研究基因型-表型关系的一个核心问题。最后，我提供了一些例子，表明重要的遗传和进化特征显然因所考虑的表型水平而异。基因型变异在不同表型水平之间传播以塑造适合度变异的方式是生物学中的一个重要研究项目。
