Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
J Exp Zool B Mol Dev Evol. 2023 Jan;340(1):8-17. doi: 10.1002/jez.b.23134. Epub 2022 Apr 22.
Despite several decades of computational and experimental work across many systems, evolvability remains on the periphery with regards to its status as a widely accepted and regularly applied theoretical concept. Here we propose that its marginal status is partly a result of large gaps between the diverse but disconnected theoretical treatments of evolvability and the relatively narrower range of studies that have tested it empirically. To make this case, we draw on a range of examples-from experimental evolution in microbes, to molecular evolution in proteins-where attempts have been made to mend this disconnect. We highlight some examples of progress that has been made and point to areas where synthesis and translation of existing theory can lead to further progress in the still-new field of empirical measurements of evolvability.
尽管在许多系统中经过了几十年的计算和实验工作，但可进化性仍然处于其作为一个被广泛接受和经常应用的理论概念的边缘地位。在这里，我们提出，其边缘地位部分是由于可进化性的各种但不相关的理论处理方法与相对较窄的经验测试范围之间存在很大差距所致。为了说明这一点，我们借鉴了一系列例子——从微生物的实验进化到蛋白质的分子进化——在这些例子中，人们试图弥补这种脱节。我们强调了已经取得的一些进展，并指出在仍然是新的可进化性经验测量领域中，综合和转化现有理论可以带来进一步进展的领域。
