The discovery of this "selfish" gene casts doubt on established evolutionary beliefs

The meiotic driver gene is a selfish gene, indeed selfish
.
They are present in the genomes of almost all species, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, causing sterility and damaging health
.
Until recently, their evolutionary lifespan was thought to be short due to their parasitic potential
.

The Stowers Institute of Medical Research, in collaboration with the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing, China, has discovered a selfish gene family that has been around for more than 100 million years, 10 times longer than any known driver of meiosis — a question raised into question
established beliefs about how natural selection and evolution handle these threatening sequences.

Associate researcher Dr Sarah Zanders said: "It has always been thought that because these genes are so harmful, they don't stay in the population for long
.
We've just discovered that this isn't true, and the genome can't always get rid of them
.
”

Meiotic drivers are named because they can "drive" the spread of genes throughout the genome, often with negative consequences
.
Natural selection is therefore a major force against selfish genes, favoring genetic variants
that eliminate the driving force behind a species' fertility and overall health.

"Natural selection has limited ability to remove meiotic drivers from populations," Zanders said
.
"Imagine holding a football team tryout (natural selection) and recruiting the best players (genes that promote health).

A driver is a player
who destroys other players' attempts.
The drivers joined the team, but not because they were good at football
.
”

In a recent study published in the journal eLife, led by Dr.
Mickael De Carvalho, a researcher in Zanders' lab, and Guo-Song Jia, Ph.
D.
, a predoctoral researcher in Dr.
Dooglilin's lab, for the first time, a family of selfish genes called wtf was identified that not only thrived in fission yeast schioschiosporphyse yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe).
It also multiplies
in three unique yeast species that split from splinter yeast about 119 million years ago.

"This finding is particularly novel because a family of driver genes thrives at least 10 times
longer than geneticists think it's possible," Zanders said.

In meiosis, the special cell division process that produces germ cells such as sperm and eggs, the genetic material from a set of chromosomes of both parents has a 50/50 chance of inheritance, or each germ cell has an equal chance of inheritance
.
The meiotic driver in yeast is actually a more powerful genetic parasite
.
The WTF gene family is the killer gene for meiosis; Not only do they pass on selfish genes to more than 50% of their offspring, they also destroy germ cells (or spores in yeast)
that don't inherit driver genes.
Natural selection in the genome often renders a species useless by favoring inhibitory or inhibitor-driven genes that save a species from selfish genes
.
How the WTF gene family evades inhibition is largely due to their rapid mutation rate
.

This persistence changes our perception of how a species overcomes an increase in infertility, which often leads to species extinction
.
It has also changed the way
scientists find and identify families of selfish genes in different species, including humans.

"Until now, when looking for candidate drivers in the genome, I wouldn't have considered 'old' genes as a possibility," Zanders said
.
"Since selfish genes are major drivers of evolution, this new finding opens the door
to thinking about how drivers can have a lasting, long-term impact on genomic evolution.
"

The wtf meiotic driver gene family has unexpectedly persisted for over 100 million years