how do they come about, how can they kill organisms
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An allele is the part of an organism’s genetic code that controls or strongly influences a particular trait, or set of traits, in that organism.
Many alleles come in pairs. One comes from the organism’s mother, and one from the father.
If one of those alleles is faulty, typically through a mutation where one or more of the DNA pairs gets changed or corrupted, the other allele can often allow the organism to continue onwards as normal, or at least to survive, even if hindered in some way.
If both alleles are faulty, however, and that allele happens to be critical to the survival of the organism, then the organism dies.
It’s not so much that lethal alleles “kill” organisms, it’s more that tens of thousands of things have to go right for an organism to grow and live in the first place, and a critical failure somewhere will bring that process grinding to a halt.
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