A silent pact was made: no eyes to see it,no hands to write it. And yet, one billionyears ago, at the dawn of multicellularlife, a historic deal was struck governingthe cooperation of cells with sharedgenomes. Implicit in the bargain wasthe distinction between the cells thatwould reproduce the organism—thegermline—and those of the ‘‘vehicle’’—the soma. Only one could be propagated, but the advantages of multicellularity for the dispersal of shared geneswas enough for the soma to acquiesce—back then, at least. Thus was the somacursed with mortality; the germline—thevery essence of reproduction—wouldpersist, variously mixing its genes withothers’, sometimes not, in the interminable procession of life.
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