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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Inherent Dynamics Visualizer, an Interactive Application for Evaluating and Visualizing Outputs from a Gene Regulatory Network Inference Pipeline
Published on: December 7, 2021
The evolution of hierarchical gene regulatory networks
Douglas H Erwin1, Eric H Davidson
1Department of Paleobiology, MRC-121, National Museum of Natural History, PO BOX 37012, Washington, Washington DC 20013-7012, USA. erwind@si.edu
Abstract:
Comparative developmental evidence indicates that reorganizations in developmental gene regulatory networks (GRNs) underlie evolutionary changes in animal morphology, including body plans. We argue here that the nature of the evolutionary alterations that arise from regulatory changes depends on the hierarchical position of the change within a GRN. This concept cannot be accomodated by microevolutionary nor macroevolutionary theory. It will soon be possible to investigate these ideas experimentally, by assessing the effects of GRN changes on morphological evolution.
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