Wouldn’t genes which stop the baby from being born, quickly exit the gene pool?
Yes, by killing the fetus before it’s born. New mutations still happen all the time. Usually they hit junk DNA and not much happens, but what if it breaks something vital? And it’s possible to inherit deleterious recessive alleles from both parents. That why incest is still a problem, from a genetic standpoint.
Similarly for gamete formation processes which allow such mutations to arise?
And yet we still have transposons. Evolution requires some amount of mutation, which is occasionally beneficial to the species. Species that were too good at preventing mutations would be unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions, and thus die out.
Evolution requires some amount of mutation, which is occasionally beneficial to the species. Species that were too good at preventing mutations would be unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions, and thus die out.
We’re aware of many species which evolved to extinction. I guess I’m looking for why there’s no plausible “path” in genome-space between this arrangement and an arrangement which makes fatal errors happen less frequently. EG why wouldn’t it be locally beneficial to the individual genes to code for more robustness against spontaneous abortions, or an argument that this just isn’t possible for evolution to find (like wheels instead of legs, or machine guns instead of claws).
Yes, by killing the fetus before it’s born. New mutations still happen all the time. Usually they hit junk DNA and not much happens, but what if it breaks something vital? And it’s possible to inherit deleterious recessive alleles from both parents. That why incest is still a problem, from a genetic standpoint.
And yet we still have transposons. Evolution requires some amount of mutation, which is occasionally beneficial to the species. Species that were too good at preventing mutations would be unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions, and thus die out.
We’re aware of many species which evolved to extinction. I guess I’m looking for why there’s no plausible “path” in genome-space between this arrangement and an arrangement which makes fatal errors happen less frequently. EG why wouldn’t it be locally beneficial to the individual genes to code for more robustness against spontaneous abortions, or an argument that this just isn’t possible for evolution to find (like wheels instead of legs, or machine guns instead of claws).