The simplicity of metazoan cell lineages
The simplicity of metazoan cell lineages
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DOI：
10.1038/nature03178
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发表时间：
2005-01-13
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Leroi, AM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Azevedo, RBR;Lohaus, R;Leroi, AM
发育过程被认为是高度复杂的，但很少有人尝试在不同的生物群体中测量和比较这种复杂性（1-5）。在这里，我们介绍了一种基于发育和计算机程序之间相似性的生物复杂性度量（6-9）。我们将细胞谱系的算法复杂度定义为基于其组成子谱系的谱系的最短描述的长度（9-13）。然后，我们用这个措施来估计的复杂性胚胎谱系的四个后生动物物种从两个不同的门。我们发现这些细胞谱系比偶然预期的要简单得多。此外，进化模拟表明，调查的胚胎谱系的复杂性接近最简单的谱系进化，假设强大的发展限制的空间位置的细胞和稳定的选择细胞数量。我们建议，选择降低复杂性在塑造后生动物细胞谱系中发挥了重要作用。
Developmental processes are thought to be highly complex, but there have been few attempts to measure and compare such complexity across different groups of organisms(1-5). Here we introduce a measure of biological complexity based on the similarity between developmental and computer programs(6-9). We define the algorithmic complexity of a cell lineage as the length of the shortest description of the lineage based on its constituent sublineages(9-13). We then use this measure to estimate the complexity of the embryonic lineages of four metazoan species from two different phyla. We find that these cell lineages are significantly simpler than would be expected by chance. Furthermore, evolutionary simulations show that the complexity of the embryonic lineages surveyed is near that of the simplest lineages evolvable, assuming strong developmental constraints on the spatial positions of cells and stabilizing selection on cell number. We propose that selection for decreased complexity has played a major role in moulding metazoan cell lineages.