The gene's-eye view of evolution puts individual genes centre stage, but some critics charge that this misses the real picture. Genes rarely act alone. Instead, they operate as part of networks of interacting genes, in which multiple genes affect each trait and each gene affects multiple traits.rnWhafs more, these networks usually have enough redundancy that deleting any one gene has little if any impact on an animal's form or function. If so, it is the network - not the individual gene - that is selected, says Eva Jablonka, an evolutionary biologist at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.
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