Tinkering: a metaphor uniting evolutionary and developmental biology.

摘要

The late 1970s was an exciting time in evolutionary biology. During this time,"the long-standing adaptionist program was being critically re-examined and the reintegration of evolutionary and developmental biology was beginning to take hold. In 1977, Frangois Jacob<1) contrasted two competing metaphors for evolutionary change: engineering, determinate, unlimited and approaching perfection, versus tinkering or "bricolage", which is contingent and highly dependent on the resources to hand. The specific assumption, which lies at the foundation of his argument, is that changes in gene regulation underlie phenotypic variation by reusing genes and genetic programs already engrained in an organism's developmental arsenal. While this article has been largely neglected in recent years, it recently served as the motivation for the Novartis symposium Tinkering: Microevolution of Development (July 2006), organized by Dan Lieberman (Harvard University) and Brian Hall (Dalhousie University). Discussions such as those held at this symposium, bringing together evolutionary, developmental, and population biologists, promise to set the groundwork for the conclusive synthesis of these fields.