Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Programming ontogenesis of the organism so that differentiation of germinal cells occurs in the earliest possible phase of ontogenesis is a very effective mechanism through which the allele can prevent the formation of a mutation that would cause transition of somatic cells into germinal cells.In this phase, the developing organism consists of only a small number of mutually genetically highly related, in the ideal case even identical cells (Buss 1987).If, in addition, the differentiation of future germinal cells and their spatial segregation in the sex organs is temporally limited to a very short period of ontogenesis, intra-individual competition between the somatic cell lines for transition to the germinal cell line cannot  occur at a later stage.Thus, somatic cells can simply only increase their inclusive fitness in that they will perform their function in the organism and thus assist in transferring copies of their genes to further generations through the germinal cell line.