Selfish DNA

Selfish genetic elements (historically also referred to as selfish genes, ultra-selfish genes, selfish DNA, parasitic DNA and genomic outlaws) are genetic segments that can enhance their own transmission at the expense of other genes in the genome, even if this has no positive or a net negative effect on organismal fitness. Genomes have traditionally been viewed as cohesive units, with genes acting together to improve the fitness of the organism. However, when genes have some control over their own transmission, the rules can change, and so just like all social groups, genomes are vulnerable to selfish behaviour by their parts.In many cases these chromosomes have no useful function at all to the species carrying them, but that they often lead an exclusively parasitic existence … need not be useful for the plants. They need only be useful to themselves.”If we allow ourselves the license of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into respectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do?” — Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene :p. 88 Selfish genetic elements (historically also referred to as selfish genes, ultra-selfish genes, selfish DNA, parasitic DNA and genomic outlaws) are genetic segments that can enhance their own transmission at the expense of other genes in the genome, even if this has no positive or a net negative effect on organismal fitness. Genomes have traditionally been viewed as cohesive units, with genes acting together to improve the fitness of the organism. However, when genes have some control over their own transmission, the rules can change, and so just like all social groups, genomes are vulnerable to selfish behaviour by their parts. Early observations of selfish genetic elements were made almost a century ago, but the topic did not get widespread attention until several decades later. Inspired by the gene-centred views of evolution popularized by George Williams and Richard Dawkins, two papers were published back-to-back in Nature in 1980 – by Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick and by Ford Doolittle and Carmen Sapienza – introducing the concept of selfish genetic elements (at the time called “selfish DNA”) to the wider scientific community. Both papers emphasized that genes can spread in a population regardless of their effect on organismal fitness as long as they have a transmission advantage. Selfish genetic elements have now been described in most groups of organisms, and they demonstrate a remarkable diversity in the ways by which they promote their own transmission. Though long dismissed as genetic curiosities, with little relevance for evolution, they are now recognized to affect a wide swath of biological processes, ranging from genome size and architecture to speciation. Observations of what is now referred to as selfish genetic elements go back to the early days in the history of genetics. Already in 1928, Russian geneticist Sergey Gershenson reported the discovery of a driving X chromosome in Drosophila obscura. Crucially, he noted that the resulting female-biased sex ratio may drive a population extinct (see Species extinction). The earliest clear statement of how chromosomes may spread in a population not because of their positive fitness effects on the individual organism, but because of their own 'parasitic' nature came from the Swedish botanist and cytogeneticist Gunnar Östergren in 1945. Discussing B chromosomes in plants he wrote: Around the same time, several other examples of selfish genetic elements were reported. For example, the American maize geneticist Marcus Rhoades described how chromosomal knobs led to female meiotic drive in maize. Similarly, this was also when it was first suggested that an intragenomic conflict between uniparentally inherited mitochondrial genes and biparentally inherited nuclear genes could lead to cytoplasmic male sterility in plants. Then, in the early 1950s, Barbara McClintock published a series of papers describing the existence of transposable elements, which are now recognized to be among the most successful selfish genetic elements. The discovery of transposable elements led to her being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1983. The empirical study of selfish genetic elements benefited greatly from the emergence of the so-called gene-centred view of evolution in the nineteen sixties and seventies. In contrast with Darwin's original formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection that focused on individual organisms, the gene's-eye view takes the gene to be the central unit of selection in evolution. It conceives evolution by natural selection as a process involving two separate entities: replicators (entities that produce faithful copies of themselves, usually genes) and vehicles (or interactors; entities that interact with the ecological environment, usually organisms). Since organisms are temporary occurrences, present in one generation and gone in the next, genes (replicators) are the only entity faithfully transmitted from parent to offspring. Viewing evolution as a struggle between competing replicators made it easier to recognize that not all genes in an organism would share the same evolutionary fate. The gene's-eye view was a synthesis of the population genetic models of the modern synthesis, in particular the work of RA Fisher, and the social evolution models of W. D. Hamilton. The view was popularized by George Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection and Richard Dawkins's best seller The Selfish Gene. Dawkins summarized a key benefit from the gene's-eye view as follows: In 1980, two high profile papers published back-to-back in Nature by Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick, and by Ford Doolittle and Carmen Sapienza, brought the study of selfish genetic elements to the centre of biological debate. The papers took their starting point in the contemporary debate of the so-called C-value paradox, the lack of correlation between genome size and perceived complexity of a species. Both papers attempted to counter the prevailing view of the time that the presence of differential amounts of non-coding DNA and transposable elements is best explained from the perspective of individual fitness, described as the ”phenotypic paradigm” by Doolittle and Sapienza. Instead, the authors argued that much of the genetic material in eukaryotic genomes persists, not because of its phenotypic effects, but can be understood from a gene's-eye view, without invoking individual-level explanations. The two papers led to a series of exchanges in Nature.