What Is Intragenomic Conflict?

The genome of an organism is its full hereditary information encoded in the DNA or in some cases in the RNA. The word comes from the combination of both gene and chromosome.

Intragenomic conflict is the struggle for survival among different elements of the genome. In this struggle, manifested in a number of different ways, so-called selfish genetic elements distort the standard rules of inheritance to gain a transmission advantage over other parts of the genome, often at the expense of the host organism itself.

Intragenomic conflict arises because natural selection can act at several levels, not just at the among-organism level described by Charles Darwin. In particular, selective differences can arise within individual organisms, among different elements in the genome, which consequently struggle for survival.

As a consequence of the conflict, some elements are over-represented in meiotic products at the expense of others, often violating the usual rules of Mendelian inheritance. These so-called selfish genetic elements are responsible for a number of interesting biological phenomena, including meiotic drive, cytoplasmic incompatibility, cytoplasmic male sterility, transposable elements, and B-chromosomes.