Waddington's Canalization Revisited: Developmental Stability and Evolution

Most species maintain abundant genetic variation and experience a range of environmental conditions, yet phenotypic variation is low. That is, development is robust to changes in genotype and environment. It has been claimed that this robustness, termed canalization, evolves because of long-term nat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2002-08, Vol.99 (16), p.10528-10532
Main Authors: Siegal, Mark L., Bergman, Aviv
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Biological Sciences
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Evolutionary genetics
Genes
Genetic equilibrium
Genetic mutation
Genetic variation
Genetics
Genotypes
Medical genetics
Models, Genetic
Phenotypes
Stabilizing selection
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Summary:Most species maintain abundant genetic variation and experience a range of environmental conditions, yet phenotypic variation is low. That is, development is robust to changes in genotype and environment. It has been claimed that this robustness, termed canalization, evolves because of long-term natural selection for optimal phenotypes. We show that the developmental process, here modeled as a network of interacting transcriptional regulators, constrains the genetic system to produce canalization, even without selection toward an optimum. The extent of canalization, measured as the insensitivity to mutation of a network's equilibrium state, depends on the complexity of the network, such that more highly connected networks evolve to be more canalized. We argue that canalization may be an inevitable consequence of complex developmental-genetic processes and thus requires no explanation in terms of evolution to suppress phenotypic variation.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.102303999