"Polygeny impedes natural selection (#C514)
Polygeny is where one trait is affected by more than one gene. 1 It makes natural selection’s job more difficult by adding considerable noise. 2
Sources
ReMine, W. J. (1993). The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory. Saint Paul, Minn.: St. Paul Science.
Notes
- ReMine, 1993, p. 178: “Pleiotropy is when genes affect more than one trait. … Polygeny is when a biological trait is affected by more than one gene. … Pleiotropy and polygeny are prevalent in life. This means that there is typically no one-to-one correspondence between genes and traits. Each gene affects more than one trait — and each trait is affected by more than one gene.” ↩
- ReMine, 1993, p. 193:”Gould put his finger on a major difficulty of evolutionary genetics — the many-gene problem. Most traits are determined by many genes. (This is called polygeny.) The prevalence of this makes origins difficult to explain.” ↩