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Evo–devo is now a mature field encompassing a wide range of research areas. The author offers his assessment of its main theoretical implications and challenges for the immediate future.
Evo–devo has its origins in both palaentology and developmental genetics, but there is a tendency to overlook the former as being old-fashioned. However, integrating information from both sources is essential to generating realistic hypotheses about how developmental processes evolved.
Genetic studies in mice are providing an increasingly complete picture of the signalling interactions that underlie the development of the mammary gland; in the process they inform us about the human disorders that are caused by mutations in these pathways, including breast cancer.
Remarkably, conservation of genomes of all species in terms of sequence and synteny is accompanied by a great diversity of karyotypes, which can be explained by rearrangements of chromosomal segments. The authors look at how these rearrangements come about, and how their analysis can construct evolutionary relationships among mammals.
The genomics era offers many exciting opportunities to answer questions in evo–devo. Newly sequenced genomes of phylogenetically diverse organisms allow us to chronicle the gain and loss of morphological features and correlate them with their genetic underpinnings.