ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2010
Genotype-phenotype mapping and the end of the 'genes as blueprint' metaphor.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers.
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71 citing papers in PubMed.
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- ΦX174 bacteriophage viability predicted by protein biophysical modeling.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Reducing phenotype-structured partial differential equations models of cancer evolution to systems of ordinary differential equations: a generalised moment dynamics approach.Journal of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- A mathematical framework for the quantitative analysis of genetic buffering.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Article
- Homeotic and nonhomeotic patterns in the tetrapod vertebral formula.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The legacy and evolvability of Pere Alberch's ideas.Interface focus · 2024Article
- Self-replicating artificial neural networks give rise to universal evolutionary dynamics.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Evolutionary robotics as a modelling tool in evolutionary biology.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2024Article
- Enzyme function and evolution through the lens of bioinformatics.The Biochemical journal · 2023Review
- No Signs of Adaptations for High Flight Intensity in the Mitochondrial Genome of Birds.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Whole Exome Sequencing of a Patient with a Milder Phenotype of Xeroderma Pigmentosum Group C.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Article
- Modelling the evolution of novelty: a review.Essays in biochemistry · 2022Article
- Severe testing with high-dimensional omics data for enhancing biomedical scientific discovery.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2022Article
- Genetic architecture of dispersal and local adaptation drives accelerating range expansions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Evolving Perspective on the Origin and Diversification of Cellular Life and the Virosphere.Genome biology and evolution · 2022Review
- Evolution of phenotypic fluctuation under host-parasite interactions.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Ready, Steady, Go AI: A practical tutorial on fundamentals of artificial intelligence and its applications in phenomics image analysis.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Review
- Hierarchical dinucleotide distribution in genome along evolution and its effect on chromatin packing.Life science alliance · 2021Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
In a now classic paper published in 1991, Alberch introduced the concept of genotype-phenotype (G-->P) mapping to provide a framework for a more sophisticated discussion of the integration between genetics and developmental biology that was then available. The advent of evo-devo first and of the genomic era later would seem to have superseded talk of transitions in phenotypic space and the like, central to Alberch's approach. On the contrary, this paper shows that recent empirical and theoretical advances have only sharpened the need for a different conceptual treatment of how phenotypes are produced. Old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading about the nature of G-->P, and are being replaced by an algorithmic approach emerging from the study of a variety of actual G-->P maps. These include RNA folding, protein function and the study of evolvable software. Some generalities are emerging from these disparate fields of analysis, and I suggest that the concept of 'developmental encoding' (as opposed to the classical one of genetic encoding) provides a promising computational-theoretical underpinning to coherently integrate ideas on evolvability, modularity and robustness and foster a fruitful framing of the G-->P mapping problem.
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