Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Meiosis is a process that should theoretically ensure that homologous chromosomes from the original diploid chromosome set of maternal cells enter the haploid chromosome set of sex cells entirely at random regardless of the alleles that the individual chromosomes contain. However, in actual fact, this is frequently not true and the structure and gene content of the individual chromosomes frequently affect which of the pair of homologous chromosomes finally ends up in the sex cells and which does not. The process of differential transfer of genes to the sex cells through differential transfer of the individual chromosomes is called meoitic drive (Zimmering, Sandler, & Nicoletti 1970; Prout, Bundgaard, & Bryant 1973; Thomson & Feldman 1974).In most cases, meoitic drive occurs during meiosis; however, in some cases, the relevant processes already occur during mitosis, which precedes meiosis or, to the contrary, follows it. To the present day, a number of processes that lead to the origin of meiotic drive have been described.