high degree of permanence. Richard Dawkins has written several books popularizing and expanding the idea. According to Dawkins, genes cause phenotypes and a gene is 'judged' by its phenotypic effects. Dawkins distinguishes entities which survive or fail to survive ("replicators") from entities with temporary existence that interact directly with the environment ("vehicles"). Genes are "replicators" whereas individuals and groups of individuals are "vehicles". Dawkins argues that, although they are both aspects of the same process, "replicators" rather than "vehicles" should be preferred as units of selection. This is because replicators, owing to their permanence, should be regarded as the ultimate beneficiaries of adaptations. Genes are replicators and therefore the gene is the unit of selection. Dawkins further expounded this view in an entire chapter called 'God's utility function' in the book River Out of Eden where he explained that genes alone have utility functions. Some clear-cut examples of selection at the level of the gene include meiotic drive and retrotransposons. In both of these cases, gene sequences increase their relative frequency in a population without necessarily providing benefits at other levels of organization. Meiotic-drive mutations (see segregation distortion) manipulate the machinery of chromosomal segregation so that chromosomes carrying the mutation are later found in more than half of the gametes produced by individuals heterozygous for the mutation, and for this reason the frequency of the mutation increases in the population. Retrotransposons are DNA sequences that, once replicated by the cellular machinery, insert themselves in the genome more or less randomly. Such insertions can be very mutagenic and thus reduce drastically individual fitness, so that there is strong selection against elements that are very active. Meiotic-drive alleles have also been shown strongly to reduce individual fitness, clearly exemplifying the potential conflict between selection at different levels. According to the RNA world hypothesis, RNA sequences performing both enzymatic and information storage roles in autocatalytic sets were an early unit of selection and evolution that would later transition into living cells. It is possible that RNA-based evolution is still taking place today. Other subcellular entities such as viruses, both DNA-based and RNA-based, do evolve. Epigene There is also view that evolution is acting on epigenes. Cell Leo Buss in his book The Evolution of Individuality proposes that much of the evolution of development in animals reflects the conflict between selective pressures acting at the level of the cell and those acting at the