中文摘要：

生物的新陈代谢是通过一系列的代谢途径来实现的。这些调节精妙、相互协作的代谢途径是如何进化形成的一直是一个引人入胜的重要问题。自1945年有关该问题的第一个假说——“逆向进化假说”提出以来，迄今已发展出七种假说，包括“逆向进化假说”、“半酶理论”、“向前发展模型”、“酶的招募假说”、“多功能酶特化假说”、“整个代谢途径的复制假说”和“从头创造假说”。其中最受关注的是“逆向进化假说”和“酶的招募假说”，而最近提出的“多功能酶特化假说”由于有较好的理论基础和实验证据支持，也逐渐引起人们的关注。本文对这些假说逐一作了概述，并结合作者的相关研究工作，对该领域的研究现状和发展趋势进行了分析讨论和展望。

英文摘要：

The metabolism of organisms is carried out through a series of metabolic pathways. How these ingeniously regulated and collaborated metabolic pathways evolved has been a fascinating and important question for some time. Since the ‘retro-evolution hypothesis＇ was first put forward in 1945, there have been seven main hypotheses concerning the evolution of metabolic pathways, including ‘retro-evolution of pathways, semi-enzymatic theory＇, ‘forward development model＇, ‘enzyme recruitment hypothesis＇, ‘specialization of multifunctional enzyme＇, ‘pathway duplication＇, and ‘de novo invention of pathways＇. Among them, the most popular hypotheses are ‘retro-evolution＇ and ‘enzyme recruitment＇, and recently greater attention has been paid to the ‘specialization of multifunctional enzyme＇ hypothesis, due to its strong theoretical basis and experimental evidence. Here, all of the seven hypotheses were reviewed, and the development prospect of this field analyzed.