Antagonistic pleiotropy
DEAntagonistische Pleiotropie
Antagonistic pleiotropy is an idea from evolutionary biologist George C. Williams, dating to 1957. Here is the idea. A gene that helps you early in life can harm you later, after you have reproduced. Why do such genes survive? Because the force of natural selection fades with age. So a gene with a late-life cost can still spread, if its early payoff is big enough. This helps explain why aging evolved at all. It is still a leading evolutionary framework. It sits alongside two others: mutation accumulation and the disposable-soma theory.
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