Jon Wilkins

• 
  Robustness and Intragenomic Conflict
  Jon Wilkins
  When natural selection is acting at the level of the the individual phenotype, we expect selection to favor more robust phenotypes. However, selection acting at the level of the gene can undermine adaptation of the individual organism, and lead to the fixation of suboptimal traits. Genomic imprinting, the phenomenon where the pattern of expression of an allele depends on its parental origin, is thought to result from and evolutionary intragenomic conflict, where maternally and paternally inherited alleles favor different optimal phenotypes. Using a simple model, I will illustrate how this can lead to the systematic unravelling of phenotypic robustness.