{"doi":"10.7554/elife.81640","title":"A toxin-antidote selfish element increases fitness of its host","abstract":"Selfish genetic elements can promote their transmission at the expense of individual survival, creating conflict between the element and the rest of the genome. Recently, a large number of toxin-antidote (TA) post-segregation distorters have been identified in non-obligate outcrossing nematodes. Their origin and the evolutionary forces that keep them at intermediate population frequencies are poorly understood. Here, we study a TA element in Caenorhabditis elegans called zeel-1;peel-1 . Two major haplotypes of this locus, with and without the selfish element, segregate in C. elegans . We evaluate the fitness consequences of the zeel-1;peel-1 element outside of its role in gene drive in non-outcrossing animals and demonstrate that loss of the toxin peel-1 decreased fitness of hermaphrodites and resulted in reductions in fecundity and body size. These findings suggest a biological role for peel-1 beyond toxin lethality. This work demonstrates that a TA element can provide a fitness benefit to its hosts either during their initial evolution or by being co-opted by the animals following their selfish spread. These findings guide our understanding on how TA elements can remain in a population where gene drive is minimized, helping resolve the mystery of prevalent TA elements in selfing animals.","journal":"eLife","year":2023,"id":361342,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9552,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1005051,"name":"Wen Xu","orcid":"0000-0003-2085-7223","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":815667,"name":"Francisco Valencia","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331911,"name":"Annalise B. Paaby","orcid":"0000-0003-1422-047X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":293934,"name":"Patrick T. McGrath","orcid":"0000-0002-1598-3746","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":293933,"name":"Lijiang Long","orcid":"0000-0002-9897-5900","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":37,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:14:10.680991Z","pmid":"37874324","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}