Beyond Darwin: evolvability and the generation of novelty - PubMed (original) (raw)

Beyond Darwin: evolvability and the generation of novelty

Marc Kirschner. BMC Biol. 2013.

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Marc Kirschner

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Darwin’s or Galapagos finches. Drawing from Darwin’s account of his observations on the voyage of HMS Beagle [2], showing the distinct adaptations of the beaks of the finches on Galapagos to different diets.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

The four-winged fruit fly. In the homeotic mutant bithorax, the halteres, which are a balancing organ, are transformed into a second pair of wings. The same transformation can be achieved by treating fruit fly pupae with ether, and selection of fruit flies by this treatment over several generations for expression of the phenotype in the absence of ether led Waddington to his theory of genetic assimilation [4]. (Figure credit: FlyBase)

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Plasticity of microtubule arrays. Microtubules are composed of tubulin subunits that can rapidly polymerize and depolymerize, and are thus said to show dynamic instability. They are here shown (a) growing rapidly from the cell center (centrosome), and shrinking more rapidly, producing a random organization. (b) A signal from the cell surface leads to (c) the selective stabilization of the growing and shrinking microtubule ends locally, and in (d) the microtubules are further stabilized by modifications that accumulate along their length. In this way, spatially random polymerization and local stabilization can lead to organized arrays of microtubules (here polarizing the cell), and allow the evolution of stable structures such as flagella and dynamic ones such as the mitotic spindle. Figure modified with permission from Figure 4-5 of Gerhart and Kirschner, Cells, Embryos, and Evolution, Oxford: Blackwell Science; © 1997.

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References

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