Figure 4.

Phenotypic assortment through amitosis enhances the impact of selection. (A) Two alleles, one slightly deleterious (blue), are present in roughly equal copy number in the somatic nucleus. (B) After the first amitotic division, the alleles are separated randomly, resulting in nonidentical daughter cells/nuclei. (C) Over many amitotic divisions, an incredibly fit lineage emerges (top), dominating the population of cells, whereas cells predominantly possessing the slightly deleterious allele divide more slowly, becoming an increasingly smaller proportion of the population of cells (bottom).