Abstract: New alleles are accumulating rapidly in living populations
and cellular mechanisms have not been adequately sought to explain the
intentional production of these changes. Homologous DNA recombination occurs
in all organisms and is at the heart of genetics. Since its discovery during
meiosis, these reactions were assumed to occur randomly along the length of
chromosomes, and only involved with gene crossovers. It is now well known
that meiotic recombination is not the random process it was originally
assumed to be, and controlled by highly organized regulatory systems. In
addition, a form of homologous recombination has been discovered which is
responsible for creating diversity in variable genes, and was recently
linked to single base-pair substitutions in immunoglobulins. New allele
formation may indeed be the key to explaining the rapid production of
distinct breeds, but their presence in the genome has been assumed the
result of random mutations. Therefore, the ability of the cell to
purposefully edit genes requires evaluation.
