The Genomic Contract

The concept of the social contract (or compact, as some prefer),
developed by such political philosophers as John Locke and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, heavily influenced the Founders. It describes a
society as the result of a kind of unwritten contract among its adult
members to cooperate and not prey on one another, who pool their
powers and jointly decide to delegate some of those powers to agents
who function as a government.

In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, in which he developed
the concept that the fundamental unit selected for fitness in
biological evolution is not the individual but the gene, and that it
is a success strategy for genes to have their organisms sacrifice
themselves to insure the survival not just of their own progeny, but
of the genes they share with their relatives. This view of genetic
evolution explains the advantage of individuals uniting in societies,
because it is the society, more than the individual, that enables the
survival of the genes shared by its members.

If we carry forward this gene-centric model of evolution, however, we
see that it is not really "the gene" that is the fundamental unit.
Genes mutate, and the mutations, if they make the organism more fit,
tend to survive and yield "progeny" that are descended from them, but
not the same. So it makes more sense to describe the fundamental unit
not as a gene but as a genetic line of descent.

However, genes do not survive or propagate in isolation, any more than
individual organisms do. It therefore makes sense to describe a genome
as a kind of society of genes, united by a kind of contract, analogous
to the social contract, which we may call the genomic contract. As a
society, instances of genes cooperate to propagate the survival of a
few copies of themselves, or mutated descendants. In multicellular
organisms, especially those that reproduce sexually, most cells are
nonreproductive and do not act to insure the survival of direct copies
of their own genes, but the genes of cells differentiated to function
as reproductive cells, in much the way that social species of
organisms do.

Looking at genomes as societies of genes united by a genomic contract
is not just a philosophic exercise. It can help us understand how
genes are organized into genomes, how they adopt specialized roles,
how they sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others, and even how
they make collective "decisions". We may even be able to identify
persistent transactions among them. We may be able to apply variations
on economic, political, and anthropological models to help us
understand them. We can speak of games with genes as players, and
apply the methods of game theory.

This is only an introduction to the use of this concept. It is hoped
that others will pick up on it and develop it further.

For more see http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/2008/01/genomic-contract.html

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Relevant Pages

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  • Re: The ultimate cause of aging
    ... survival and reproduction indefinitely. ... natural selection acts more strongly on variations ... The basic problem with it, however, is that there is evidence of senescence effector and suppressor genes that control the rate of aging in some organisms. ...
    (talk.origins)
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  • Re: Evolution of Separate Genders in Animals
    ... mean cell underwent meosis instead of mitosis, ... if that were the case we would need two organisms to ... Lets just assume that the other poster is right and that mitosis ... both nuclei have all the required genes it needs. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution of Separate Genders in Animals
    ... mean cell underwent meosis instead of mitosis, ... if that were the case we would need two organisms to ... *many* copies of each gene and does not divide by mitosis. ... both nuclei have all the required genes it needs. ...
    (talk.origins)