Mariner sails into Leishmania

Developmental homologues: lineages and analysis

Developmental processes present several problems for identifying homologies and analyzing their evolution. Most evolutionary techniques approach homologies from either a taxonomic or a molecular perspective. Approaches that can accommodate many problems of developmental evolution are not well developed. Developmental process and evolutionary lineage complexity lead to a number of largely unappreciated conceptual and analytic problems. Developmental processes can evolve by duplication or diversification. Each process is in a hierarchy of super- and subprocesses. As they evolve, process components may be exchanged with or acquired by those of other processes. Because they do not fit into standard analytic procedures, these situations (including reticulate or reticulate-appearing lineages, partial homologues, iterative features, and the tracing of nontaxonomic and nonmolecular evolutionary lineages) are often ignored or considered illegitimate. Biology's disdain for the dichotomously branching phylogenetic lineages that are the basis of standard analytic approaches is ignored at the risk of making falsely negative homology evaluations. I will present an approach that can accommodate analyses of these situations. The use of nontaxonomic and nonmolecular lineages provides a way to structure comparisons between other entities, as taxonomic lineages structure comparisons among potential homologues. From an informational point of view, any entity (either a structure or process) with an evolutionary history is a potential homologue with a potential evolutionary lineage. Comparing lineages of interacting entities can reveal topological incongruences among them. Methods that identify reticulated taxonomic and molecular lineages should also apply to other lineages. Partial homologues, resulting from reticulated lineages, can be handled in several possible ways. Analytically, such an entity can be treated as a partial homologue, a novel feature, an independent sub-unit, or a unitary feature homologous to the major contributor of its inherited features.

Chance favors the prepared genome

Most descriptions of mutation have emphasized its negative consequences, and randomness with respect to biological function. This book seeks to balance the discussion by emphasizing mechanisms that both diversify the genome and increase the probability that a genome's descendants will survive. This chapter provides a framework for, and overview of, the diverse contributions to this book; these contributions will be stimulating companions, well into the 21st Century, as we work to comprehend the information contained in genomic databases. Genomes that encode "better" amino acid sequences are at a selective advantage. Genomes that generate diversity also are at an advantage to the extent that they can navigate efficiently through the space of possible sequence changes. Biochemical systems that tend to increase the ratio of useful to destructive genetic change may harness preexisting information (horizontal gene transfer, DNA translocation and/or DNA duplication), focus the location, timing, and extent of genetic change, adjust the dynamic range of a gene's activity, and/or sample regulatory connections between sites distributed across the genome. Rejecting entirely random genetic variation as the substrate of genome evolution is not a refutation, but rather provides a deeper understanding, of the theory of natural selection of Darwin and Wallace. The fittest molecular strategies survive, along with descendants of the genomes that encode them.