期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1981
卷号:78
期号:1
页码:397-401
DOI:10.1073/pnas.78.1.397
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Genetics and molecular biology have shown the mechanisms that allow the genome to provide both the continuity and the variation from generation to generation within a phylogeny. Embryology and developmental biology show the mechanisms that turn the genome into an organism. Mutations, the basis for evolutionary change, cannot in themselves ensure concordance between their products and the products of unchanged genes. Thus, mutations will not necessarily produce a viable organism. On the other hand, ontogenetic buffer mechanisms normally maintain concordance in the developing organism. In addition, ontogenetic buffer mechanisms can integrate discordant mutations into viable organisms that can then be perpetuated during evolution. The evolutionary role of one ontogenetic buffer mechanism, compensatory innervation, is well illustrated in the anopthalmic mutant mouse. In the anopthalmic mouse, a single gene mutation removes afferent axons of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus, and compensatory innervation by another population of axons ensures that the dorsal lateral geniculate remains integrated into the central nervous system. Within each organism's ontogeny is a hierarchy of sources of compensatory innervation, and this hierarchy will determine how any particular deafferentating mutation will be buffered. In this way, an ontogeny can channel the phylogeny of which it is a member.