The evolution of peptide hormones

Despite limitations in our present knowledge it is already possible to discern the main features of peptide hormone evolution, since the same mechanisms (and indeed the same hormone molecules) function in many different ways. This underlying unity of organization has its basis in the tendency of biochemical networks, once established, to survive and diversify. The most surprising recent findings in endocrinology have been the discovery of vertebrate peptide hormones in multiple sites within the same organism, and the reports, persuasive but requiring confirmation, of vertebrate hormones in primitive unicellular organisms (20, 20a). Perhaps the major challenge for the future is to define the roles and interactions of the many peptide hormones identified in brain (18). The most primitive bacteria and the human brain, though an enormous evolutionary distance apart, may have more in common than we have recognized until now. As Axelrod & Hamilton have pointed out in a recent provocative article, "The Evolution of Cooperation" (1), bacteria, though lacking a brain, are capable of adaptive behavior that can be analysed in terms of game theory. It is clear that we can learn a great deal about the whole evolutionary process from a study of the versatile and durable peptide hormones molecules.