The Canadian entrepreneur has always pushed the boundaries of gene editing, once attempting to turn horses into unicorns. Now she is set on modifying human embryos – something her controversial ex-husband was jailed for doing
aren’t bound to Evolutionary advantage to survive.
That’s not how evolution works though. Evolution is a process that works a the gene-level. A gene that makes its carrier more likely to reproduce and keep its offspring alive will over time propagate and replace genes that are less likely to do so. This is a simple game of statistics that works regardless of whether the organism that carries the gene is a human or not.
Basically, evolution isn’t about survival. It’s about what genes are more likely to propagate to the next generation. You can simulate this fairly easily: If you have a completely stable population (the average person produces one offspring), and a gene that makes e.g. 10 % of the population produce on average 0.99 offspring, you’ll see that after a certain number of generations that gene is drowned out and eventually extinguished. Any gene that isn’t extinguished has survived because it doesn’t put its carrier at a big enough disadvantage to be extinguished.
That’s not how evolution works though. Evolution is a process that works a the gene-level. A gene that makes its carrier more likely to reproduce and keep its offspring alive will over time propagate and replace genes that are less likely to do so. This is a simple game of statistics that works regardless of whether the organism that carries the gene is a human or not.
Basically, evolution isn’t about survival. It’s about what genes are more likely to propagate to the next generation. You can simulate this fairly easily: If you have a completely stable population (the average person produces one offspring), and a gene that makes e.g. 10 % of the population produce on average 0.99 offspring, you’ll see that after a certain number of generations that gene is drowned out and eventually extinguished. Any gene that isn’t extinguished has survived because it doesn’t put its carrier at a big enough disadvantage to be extinguished.