Dynamical systems approach to evolution-development congruence: Revisiting Haeckel's recapitulation theory.

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary developmental biology
• Systems biology
• Genetics

Background:

• Embryonic development progresses from general to specific forms.
• Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory posits parallels between evolution and development, a question still debated.
• Understanding the mechanisms driving these parallels is crucial for developmental biology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To revisit and test Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory.
• To explore the parallelism between evolution and development using numerical evolution and dynamical systems theory.
• To investigate the role of gene regulation networks (GRN) in shaping developmental and evolutionary patterns.

Main Methods:

• Modeling intracellular gene expression dynamics with cell-to-cell interactions in spatially aligned cells.
• Evolving gene regulation networks (GRN) under selection pressure for specific spatial gene expression patterns.
• Applying dynamical systems theory to analyze evolutionary and developmental pattern changes.

Main Results:

• Evolved GRNs and developmental patterns showed remarkable similarity across generations.
• Both evolutionary and developmental patterns exhibited epochal changes, with rapid pattern formation followed by stable periods.
• These epochal changes correspond to bifurcations in dynamical systems, shifting network structures from feedforward to feedback loops.

Conclusions:

• The study provides evidence supporting a congruence between evolutionary acquisitions and developmental network changes.
• The findings offer a novel perspective on recapitulation and heterochrony, linking them to dynamical system bifurcations.
• The proposed theory is consistent with segmentation gene-expression dynamics and offers experimentally testable predictions via transcriptome and network analysis.