Evo-devo in the era of gene regulatory networks

Advanced genomics tools enable powerful new strategies for understanding complex biological processes, including development. By extension, we should be able to use these methods in a comparative fashion to capture evolutionary mechanisms. This requires a capacity to go deep and broad, to analyze developmental gene regulatory networks in many organisms, especially nontraditional models. As we usher in a new era of next-generation GRN (gene regulatory network) analysis, it is important to ask how to evaluate the evolution of network interactions. Particularly problematic, as always, is defining "independence": Are two character traits found together because they are functionally linked or because of historical accident? The same basic question applies to understanding developmental GRN evolution. However, the essential difference here is that a GRN defines a causal chain of events. An understanding of causal relations--how Genes A and B work in concert to drive expression of Genes C and D to create a new Territory E--gives hope for establishing "trait independence" in a way that purely correlative arguments--the association of the expression of Gene D in Territory E--never could. Insight into causality provides the key to interpretation, as seen in this simplified scenario. Real-world networks bring new degrees of complexity, but the elucidation of causal relations remains the same. Has the day arrived when a single laboratory has the wherewithal to conduct multiorganism gene network projects in parallel? No. However, we argue that day is closer than one might suppose. We describe how a speedboat GRN project in one's favorite nonmodel organism(s) might look and provide a framework for comparative network analysis.