POSSIBLE EXPLANATION. “In a communication to Nature, Ray proposed that DNA heteroduplexes had conserved the wild-type alleles; fragments of chromosomes carried on the two independent parental DNA chains were used in a form of mismatch repair to restore the mutants to wild-type, and could account for some of the reversion.”
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/26000/title/Mendel-upended-/