Boris F Chadov, E.V. Chadova, N.B Fedorova, Ontogenes and the Problem of Speciation, Journal of Evolutionary Science, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2019, Pages 33-47, ISSN 2689-4602, https://doi.org/10.14302/issn.2689-4602.jes-18-2431.
(https://www.ijn-medicalarticles.info/evolutionary-science/article/ontogenes-and-the-problem-of-speciation-1013)
Abstract: The existing hypotheses on speciation rely on Mendelian genes and mutations in them. However, genome-wide sequencing demonstrates that the Mendelian genes account for less than one-tenth of the entire genome DNA. This means that a greater part of the genome has not yet been subject to large-scale evolutionary consideration. This paper deals with the conditional mutations in drosophila, which are mutations of the genes belonging to a special category (ontogenes) controlling the program of individual development. The ontogenes presumably reside in the DNA of intergenic spaces and introns. Conditional mutations display a number of properties absent in the mutations of Mendelian genes. These specific properties allow three key problems in speciation to be solved: (1) the possibility of emergence of new traits as a result of sequential mutagenesis; (2) selection of mutants; and (3) establishment of isolation. We have shown that (1) the mutations in ontogenes are able to form new multigenic regulatory blocks that escape selection during their creation; (2) mutations in ontogenes allow for existence of constantly acting zygotic selection, which is by no means less important for speciation than Darwinian selection; and (3) owing to their conditionally lethal effect, the mutations in ontogenes are able to create a biological isolation barrier. This gives the grounds for assuming that the emergence of mutations in ontogenes is a necessary condition for speciation.
Keywords: speciation; evolution; conditional mutations; ontogenes; drosophila