Sullivan Luis F, Barker Matthew S, Felix Princess C, Vuong Richard Q, White Benjamin H
Section on Neural Function, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
FEBS J. 2024 Mar;291(6):1049-1079. doi: 10.1111/febs.16650. Epub 2022 Oct 31.
The geneticist Thomas Dobzhansky famously declared: 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'. A key evolutionary adaptation of Metazoa is directed movement, which has been elaborated into a spectacularly varied number of behaviours in animal clades. The mechanisms by which animal behaviours have evolved, however, remain unresolved. This is due, in part, to the indirect control of behaviour by the genome, which provides the components for both building and operating the brain circuits that generate behaviour. These brain circuits are adapted to respond flexibly to environmental contingencies and physiological needs and can change as a function of experience. The resulting plasticity of behavioural expression makes it difficult to characterize homologous elements of behaviour and to track their evolution. Here, we evaluate progress in identifying the genetic substrates of behavioural evolution and suggest that examining adaptive changes in neuromodulatory signalling may be a particularly productive focus for future studies. We propose that the behavioural sequences used by ecdysozoans to moult are an attractive model for studying the role of neuromodulation in behavioural evolution.
遗传学家托马斯·杜布赞斯基有一句名言：“生物学中没有任何东西是有意义的，除非从进化的角度去看”。后生动物的一个关键进化适应性特征是定向运动，这种运动在动物类群中已演变成数量惊人、种类繁多的行为。然而，动物行为进化的机制仍未得到解决。部分原因在于基因组对行为的间接控制，基因组为构建和运作产生行为的脑回路提供了组件。这些脑回路能够灵活地响应环境变化和生理需求，并会根据经验发生改变。行为表达所产生的可塑性使得难以对行为的同源成分进行特征描述并追踪其进化过程。在此，我们评估了在确定行为进化的遗传基础方面所取得的进展，并提出研究神经调节信号的适应性变化可能是未来研究特别富有成效的一个重点。我们认为，蜕皮动物蜕皮时所使用的行为序列是研究神经调节在行为进化中作用的一个有吸引力的模型。
