Emergence of Complex Adaptation from Microevolutionary Variation

瓦特博士的研究涉及复杂生物适应从简单起源的兴起。他的团队使用一组野外和实验室生物学都很有名的昆虫作为研究系统，这使得他们有更大的分析能力来研究自然选择的整个过程，从化学机制到野外遗传变异之间的适应性实际差异。此外，这些昆虫需要能量的飞行使用了所有细胞生命共同的生理机能，这一事实使得对这种“进化模型”系统的研究与许多其他生理活跃的动物（包括人类）普遍相关。最近，瓦特博士在一种特殊的催化蛋白的结构中发现了历史性的“创新步骤”的证据，这种蛋白质是动物能量加工的核心。与其他祖先物种相比，这一“步骤”大大增强了携带它的种群和物种对热应激的抵抗力。也许正因为如此，在一个低地物种种群中，瓦特博士和他的团队发现，在与温度相关的自然选择中，出现了范围非常广的新变异，这种物种现在在这种能量处理机制中具有热抗性。此外，在这一系列变体之外，新的和更复杂的组合正在取得成功。这项工作将首先探索产生这些组合的过程的本质，然后测试基因和物种之间发现的普遍性。这项工作将涉及进化生物学中的主要概念问题，例如：生物的复杂性是如何从简单的开始产生的，这是自达尔文以来一直关注的中心问题；-某些活的机制可能表现出长期的自然变异，而不是在种群中通常有一种优越的“类型”；-澄清跨种群和物种的大规模、长期“宏观进化”与短期内使种群适应当地条件的局部“微观进化”之间的联系。了解适应自然变化的热条件的复杂性对于理解由人类引起的局部和全球热条件的快速变化对这些机制施加的压力非常重要。这对保护和环境管理以及农业和医学都有影响，因为两者的环境背景都在迅速变化。

Dr. Watt's research deals with the rise of complex biological adaptations from simpler beginnings. His team uses as a study system a group of insects whose field and lab biology are both well known, allowing for greater analytical power to study the whole process of natural selection, from chemical mechanisms to actual differences in fitness among inheritable variants in the wild. Also, the fact that these insects' energy-demanding flight uses physiology common to all cellular life makes the studies of this "evolutionary model" system of general relevance to many other physiologically active animals (including humans).Recently, Dr. Watt has found evidence of a historical "innovative step" in the structure of a particular catalytic protein which is central to animal energy processing. This "step" confers sharply increased resistance to heat stress on populations and species which carry it, as compared to other ancestral species. Perhaps as a consequence, in one population of a lowland species, now thermally resistant in this energy processing mechanism, Dr. Watt and his team find a very wide range of new variation experiencing temperature-related natural selection. Further, out of this range of variants, new and more complex combinations are becoming successful. This work will first explore the nature of the processes generating these combinations, and then test the generality of the findings among genes and species.This work will bear on major conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, such as: - How living complexity arises from simple beginnings, which has been a central focus since Darwin;- The likelihood that some living mechanisms may exhibit chronic natural variability, rather than there routinely being one superior "type" which is predominant in populations;- Clarification of the connections between large-scale, long-term "macroevolution" across populations and species, and local "microevolution" adjusting populations to local conditions in the short term. Understanding the complexity of adaptation to naturally changed thermal conditions will be important in understanding the stresses placed on these mechanisms by rapid human-caused change of local and global thermal conditions. There are implications here for conservation and environmental management and for agriculture and medicine as the environmental context for both change rapidly.