Research Article
The Silent Cooperator: An Epigenetic Model for Emergence of Altruistic Traits in Biological Systems
Figure 2
Genetic hitchhiking: the frequency of a gene could increase in the population due to lying at the same chromosome of another advantageous gene. In these “domino organisms,” the top gene, the number of dots, represents a trait that is advantageous to its carrier, such as resistance to toxins or diseases. Hence, as the domino organisms with the highest dot number get positively selected, their bottom genes, which have no influence on their fitness, also spread in the population.