So I keep talking about “the selfish gene,” but have we ever talked about what it is? That’s this week’s genetics quiz question:
What are selfish genes?
Answer:
From Chapter 6 of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins:
What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA. Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. If we allow ourselves the licence 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? It is trying to get more numerous in the gene pool. Basically it does this by helping to Program the bodies in which it finds itself to survive and to reproduce.
[...] writes of Terrorists, Genes and Metaphors: …The worst case of an uncontrolled metaphor was Richard Dawkins’ ’selfish gene’. No gene can be selfish nor can even appear to be acting selfishly, the word is quite meaningless. [...]
[...] Bryan Appleyard at Thought Experiments writes of Terrorists, Genes and Metaphors: …The worst case of an uncontrolled metaphor was Richard Dawkins’ ’selfish gene’. No gene can be selfish nor can even appear to be acting selfishly, the word is quite meaningless. (For a full analysis of the damage done by this metaphor and its entirely unscientific basis, read Denis Noble’s superb book The Music of Life: Biology beyond the Genome.) Yet people drew political and social conclusions – which, in fairness, Dawkins did not – from this rather dodgy metaphor. The same thing is happening now with terrorism. Metaphors are falling like snow from a heavy sky. The danger is that people don’t know what they are and mistake them for the simple truth. [...]
Deb: I’m glad you think so! I was just wondering how long I should continue the quiz series. Perhaps indefinitely!
You make the hard to understand easier to understand. I love genetics and the science of it all.