Cheating, and getting away with it: Works for amoeba
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:30
in Psychology & Sociology
We would all like to believe that there is a kind of karma in life that guarantees those who cheat eventually pay for their bad behavior, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line. But a study of a new gene in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum suggests that, at least for amoebae, it is possible to cheat and get away with it. Scientists have found a gene that allows amoebae to pass on more than their fair share of their genes but doesn’t make them less fit in other ways.