Tinkering: The Microevolution of Development

Symposium on Tinkering: the microevolution of development, Novartis Foundation No. 284, pp. 300. London, 11-13 July 2006. A cura di Gregory Bock e Jamie Goode.
Nel lontano 1977 Francois Jacob scrisse un breve saggio, poi pubblicato da Einaudi sul Bricolage (Tinkering), dal titolo Evolution and Tinkering pubblicato su Science. L'autore sosteneva che l'evoluzione agisce non solo per accumulazione graduale di piccoli cambiamenti ma anche recuperando quanto trova sulla sua strada, ristrutturando e modificando strutture e funzioni adattandole a nuovi scopi. Dopo 30 anni la Novartis Foundation pubblica alcune riflessioni sul concetto del Bricolage applicandolo all'evo-devo!
Dal sito web riporto:
Much recent research in evolutionary developmental biology has focused on the origin of new body plans. However, most evolutionary change at the population and species level consists of tinkering: small-scale alterations in developmental pathways within a single body plan. Such microevolutionary events have been well studied on a population genetic level and from the perspective of adaptive phenotypic evolution, but their developmental mechanisms remain poorly studied. This book explores both theoretical and practical issues of tinkering. It features a wide range of perspectives to address several fundamental questions. How does tinkering occur developmentally, and how is it manifested phenotypically? Are the developmental mechanisms by which tinkering occur different from those that underlie larger evolutionary changes? What are the developmental constraints on tinkering? And how do we test hypotheses about microevolutionary shifts in development from the fossil record?
Sommario:
Daniel E. Lieberman The evolutionary developmental biology of tinkering: an introduction to the challenge.
Manfred D. Laubichler Tinkering: a conceptual and historical evaluation
Rudolf A. Raff and Elizabeth C. Raff Tinkering: new embryos from old-rapidly and cheaply.
James M. Cheverud The relationship between development and evolution through heritable variation.
Adam S. Wilkins Genetic networks as transmitting and amplifying devices for natural genetic tinkering.
Paul M. Brakefield Butterfly eyespot patterns and how evolutionary tinkering yields diversity.
Günter P. Wagner and Anna Marie Pyle Tinkering with transcription factor proteins: the role of transcription factor adaptation in developmental evolution.
Denis Duboule, Basile Tarchini, Jozsef Zàkàny and Marie Kmita Tinkering with constraints in the evolution of the vertebrate limb anterior-posterior polarity.
Irma Thesleff, Elina Järvinen and Marika Suomalainen Affecting tooth morphology and renewal by fine-tuning the signals mediating cell and tissue interactions.
Benedikt Hallgrimsson, Daniel E. Lieberman, Nathan M. Young, Trish Parsons and Steven Wat Evolution of covariance in the mammalian skull.
David L. Stern The developmental genetics of microevolution.
Jukka Jernvall and Isaac Salazar-Ciudad The economy of tinkering mammalian teeth.
Michael A. Bell, Kaitlyn E. Ellis and Howard I. Sirotkin Pelvic skeleton reduction and Pitx1 expression in threespine stickleback populations.
Michael I. Coates, Marcello Ruta and Peter J. Wagner Using patterns of fin and limb phylogeny to test developmental-evolutionary scenarios.
Rebecca R. Ackermann Craniofacial variation and developmental divergence in primate and human evolution.

Paolo Coccia