/lit/ - Literature

>>22291909
>>22292023
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Dawkins addresses this in the book. The publisher like "Selfish Gene" because it would trigger morons, and Dawkins laments that it isn't the "Selfish Allele" (because said morons don't know what alleles are).

DNA is a string of code. At various points in the DNA, there are START, STOP, and INSTRUCTION portions. The START and STOP portions (Codons) just tell a replicator to start processing the INSTRUCTION portions. The INSTRUCTIONs code for for some protein. These proteins are produced by the replicator, and the go on to make organelles, enzymes, etc. Each START, INSTRUCTION, STOP, in a strand of DNA is a gene. A gene is a site in the DNA strand. The specific data in the INSTRUCTION portion is an "allele". A "gene" is, properly, a population of alleles.

Genes do not compete, because genes are just populations of alleles. Alleles do not compete across genes: the alleles that code for green eyes are not in competition with the alleles that code for blonde hair, but the alleles that code for red hair ARE in competition with the alleles that code for blond hair, because the hair-color alleles occupy the same slots in the DNA.

Alleles, not genes, are selfish because they do not think of things other than themselves. An allele "wants" to maximize its replication (technically, alleles want nothing, it's just that the alleles that are most likely to be replicated are replicated). Everything that an allele does is about maximizing replication.