Evolving New Information

Nit-picking, I'm afraid, but dominant/recessive is usually down to the intereaction of the proteins (often enzymes) produced by the two alleles not the differential expression of them.

That's fascinating Percy.Presumably there's also a frequency dependent effect wherby less used codons are translated faster (since there's less competition for the tRNAs used).

There are actually a variety of genes that lead to the melanic form; and these will arise by spontaneous mutation from time to time - a fact which is likely to be partiarly responsible for the maintainance of the melanic form in normal populations - so it is also likely that some of the melanic forms selected during the industrial period arise by new mutation during that period so both you and Greyseal are partially correct.

Really? Interesting. I was under the impression the generally held view was that retroviruses pre-dated the domain split, since certain retroviral proteins from different domains of life are most closely related to each other than they are to any host protein. I was also under the impression that transposons were thought most likely to be degenerate viruses whose evolutionary pathway had taken them away from having a separate infective stage.Do you have sources I can look at?