A new paper coming from Brown, advertised as "Does the villainous 'selfish gene' undermine genome's police?" was released today. The article turns out to describe an interesting process by which a segregation disorder-gene (SD) seems to destroy sperm that contain a different allele. The allele that triggers the reaction is called Responder, which replicates in its segment of DNA, acting as a parasite to the genome. SD provides cytoplasm with enzymes that target Responder such that when the cells divide in meiosis, Responder-laden sperm are destroyed. This mechanism seems pretty amazing to me, but perhaps not in the way implied by its headline...
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