From: Robert Trivers < To: Alan Rogers 5 Cc: Gordon Gett Tim Kane >, Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation®gmail.com> , Oliver Goodenou h Rob Hanson , Bobby McCormick , Clive Crook , Gerry Ohrstrom Monika Gruter Chene Ron Baile "Richerson, Peter J" < Clair Brown < , "Ms. Yvette Robbins" , Matt Ridl , Lee Silver , Dane Stan ler , Anna Dreber Paul Romer Mike Ca , Evan Smith Bill Prezant Jim Halligan , "Alex.Family Pines" , David Darst Subject: Re: Free Growth (09-29-17) part 2.pdf Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 17:06:12 +0000 John , Roger Edelen Mallen Ma cuerite Atkins , Ditsa Pines a yes Alan i think you are you are referring to duplication of a gene—there are many such genes including those produced by retrotransposons (as evidenced by lack of introns)—where a gene has two separate effects and there is an advantage to having a gene with each effect you will often prefer two genes to one, because of less interference in fitness effects Peter was talking about a gene with a single effect—sickling—and the other allele is the normal one—the heterozygote destroys malaria within red blood cells at trivial cost and there is no cost at all if malaria is not present—by contrast homozygous sickle individuals suffer lifetime effects Peter was trying to conjure up a heterozygote that propagated asexually but this requires a chiasma between neighbouring genes, a very rare event and hence it usually leads rapidly to mutational decay of one of the two copies, i.e. so-called pseudogenes, of which there are many in our genome in haste On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 11:02 PM, Alan Rogers <1 > wrote: I haven't read whatever Pete wrote, but if I understand Bob correctly, Pete must be talking about subfunctionalization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subfunctionalization If so, it's not a radical suggestion. It's thought to be the process that gave rise to all multi-gene families. Michael Lynch discusses it in his book, The Origin of Genome Architecture. A