Purugganan M D
Department of Genetics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh 27695, USA. michaelp@unity,ncsu.edu
Bioessays. 1998 Sep;20(9):700-11. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1521-1878(199809)20:9<700::AID-BIES3>3.0.CO;2-K.
Morphological differences between species, from simple single-character differences to large-scale variation in body plans, can be traced to changes in the timing and location of developmental events. This has led to a growing interest in understanding the genetic basis behind the evolution of developmental systems. Molecular evolutionary genetics provides one of several approaches to dissecting the evolution of developmental systems, by allowing us to reconstruct the history of developmental genetic pathways, infer the origin and diversification of developmental gene functions, and assess the relative contributions of various evolutionary forces in shaping regulatory gene evolution.
物种之间的形态差异，从简单的单一性状差异到身体结构的大规模变化，都可以追溯到发育事件的时间和位置的变化。这使得人们越来越有兴趣去了解发育系统进化背后的遗传基础。分子进化遗传学提供了几种剖析发育系统进化的方法之一，它使我们能够重建发育遗传途径的历史，推断发育基因功能的起源和多样化，并评估各种进化力量在塑造调控基因进化中的相对贡献。
