ANTAGONISTIC PLEIOTROPY. “George C. Williams took Medawar’s ideas a step further. If it is true that selection cannot counteract deleterious effects at old age, he argued, then mutations or alleles might exist that have opposite, pleiotropic effects at different ages: genetic variants that on the one hand exhibit beneficial effects on fitness early in life, when selection is strong, but that on the other hand have deleterious effects late in life, when selection is already weak.”
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-evolution-of-aging-23651151
linkedin post 2022-06-29 05:12:48
Nigel Fleming
September 21, 2022