Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1980 Apr 17;284(5757):601-3.
doi: 10.1038/284601a0.

Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution

W F Doolittle, C Sapienza

Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution

W F Doolittle et al. Nature. .

Abstract

Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only 'function' is survival within genomes. Prokaryotic transposable elements and eukaryotic middle-repetitive sequences can be seen as such DNA's and thus no phenotypic or evolutionary function need be assigned to them.

PubMed Disclaimer

LinkOut - more resources