PYI: Ontogeny and Phylogeny of the Tetrapod Skeleton

德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的Timothy Rowe博士将在获得总统青年研究者奖的五年时间里，利用系统发育系统学来探索哺乳动物个体发育的进化。这项工作从逻辑上遵循了先前的研究，该研究分析了哺乳动物主要群体和新西达目（早期爬行动物的祖先，真正的哺乳动物）中最接近灭绝的亲戚的骨骼进化。结果总结了近1000个骨骼的历史变化。现在，在检查现存哺乳动物的骨骼发育时，可以参考这些信息。分支学方法将用于分析选定的哺乳动物和四足动物物种的骨骼发育，系统发育转化和在个体发育中概括的转化序列，以及转化序列的中断或缺失。为了实现这些目标，有必要从现存哺乳动物物种的清除和染色胚胎中获取发育信息；序列切片和图像（来自核磁共振技术，来自稀有或濒危物种）也将被处理并纳入数据集。上述研究在生成新数据和与先前观察相结合以解决进化生物学中长期存在的问题方面具有非凡的潜力。此外，它还强调了系统生物学在为分子和发育生物学、比较解剖学和古生物学等不同领域的线索提供统一主题方面的重要性。

Dr. Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas at Austin will devote his time during the five years of this Presidential Young Investigator Award to using phylogenetic systematics to explore the evolution of mammalian ontogeny. This work logically follows from previous research, which analyzed skeletal evolution in the major groups of Mammalia and the closest extinct relatives within Synapsida (early reptilian forms ancestral to true mammals). Nearly 1,000 historic transformations of the skeleton were summarized as a result. It is now possible to refer to this information while examining skeletal development in living mammals. Cladistic methods will be used to analyze skeletal development in selected mammalian and tetrapod species, phylogenetic transformations and sequences of transformations that recapitulate in ontogeny, and disruptions or deletions in transformation sequences. To accomplish these goals, it will be necessary to acquire developmental information from cleared and stained embryos of extant mammal species; serial sections, and images (from nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, from rare or endangered species) will also be processed and incorporated into the data set. The research described above has exceptional potential for generating new data and for syntheses with previous observations to solve long-standing problems in evolutionary biology. In addition, it highlights the importance of systematic biology in supplying a unifying theme to threads from the disparate fields of molecular and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology.