Discovery of 119-Million year old Selfish Genes Casts Doubt on Established Evolution Beliefs

Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, 2022.

Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their longevity over evolutionary time was thought to be brief due to their parasitic potential, until recently. The Stowers Institute for Medical Research, in collaboration with the National Institute for Biological Sciences in Beijing, China, has discovered a selfish gene family that has survived for over 100 million years—ten times longer than any other meiotic driver ever identified—calling into question established beliefs about how natural selection and evolution deal with these threatening sequences.