Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Evo–devo

Modelling the evolutionarily possible

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 9, pages 894–895 (2008)Cite this article

The aim of studies in developmental dynamics is to explain how phenotypes are distributed in phenotypic space and, by extension, how a genotype is translated into one or many phenotypes during ontogeny or evolution. The model developed by the authors explores these issues by relating how a genetic input — a function of the number of genes and gene regulatory interactions — determines the phenotypic output, that is, the fraction of phenotypes that are actually visible out of all those that are theoretically possible. Genotypes are allowed to vary, and are mapped onto the resulting phenotypes via a fixed developmental plan.

Much as expected, the authors found that as the number of regulatory interactions grows, so does the number of phenotypes that can potentially be sampled. Surprisingly, this also leads to a reduction in the number of actual visible phenotypes — that is, an expansion in genotypic space makes the phenotypic space shrink owing to increased canalization (or genetic robustness), which itself is probably a result of a larger number of gene–gene interactions, or epistasis. So although increasing regulatory diversity allows a system to explore novel phenotypes, it also allows it to become more robust in specific areas of phenotypic space.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Borenstein, E. & Krakauer, D. C. An end to endless forms: epistasis, phenotype distribution bias, and nonuniform evolution. PLoS Comput. Biol. 4, e1000202 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

FURTHER READING

  1. Raff, R. A. Written in stone: fossils, genes and evo–devo. Nature Rev. Genet. 8, 911–920 (2007)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Pigliucci, M. Is evolvability evolvable? Nature Rev. Genet. 9, 75–82 (2008)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Tanita Casci
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Casci, T. Modelling the evolutionarily possible. Nat Rev Genet 9, 894–895 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2493

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2493

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing