The
gene-centered view of evolution,
gene's eye view,
gene selection theory, or
selfish gene theory holds that adaptive
evolution occurs through the differential survival of competing
genes, increasing the
allele frequency of those
alleles whose
phenotypic trait effects successfully promote their own propagation, with gene defined as "not just one single physical bit of DNA [but] all replicas of a particular bit of DNA distributed throughout the world". The proponents of this viewpoint argue that, since
heritable information is passed from generation to generation almost exclusively by
DNA,
natural selection and evolution are best considered from the perspective of genes.