The Silent Cooperator: An Epigenetic Model for Emergence of Altruistic Traits in Biological Systems

Figure 3

Silent genes and genetic hitchhiking: a cooperative gene in a world of defectors will be heavily exploited with no other cooperators to interact with. Hence, it has low chances of spreading in the population. A silent gene, on the other hand, does not affect its carriers’ fitness till activation. And, it might hitchhike a selective sweep if it happened to be in an organism with relatively higher fitness, due to influence of the rest of the genes.