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Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…
The grand challenges in biology today are being shaped by powerful high-throughput technologies that have revealed the genomes of many organisms, global expression patterns of genes and detailed information about variation within…
We introduce and analyse an individual-based evolutionary model, in which a population of genetically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources. Through theoretical analysis and stochastic simulations, we show that the…
A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the developing…
The exploration of vast genotype spaces poses fundamental challenges for evolving populations. As the number of genotypes encoding viable phenotypes grows exponentially with genome length, populations can only explore a tiny fraction of…
It has been hypothesized that one of the main reasons evolution has been able to produce such impressive adaptations is because it has improved its own ability to evolve -- "the evolution of evolvability". Rupert Riedl, for example, an…
This paper introduces a variational formulation of natural selection, paying special attention to the nature of "things" and the way that different "kinds" of "things" are individuated from - and influence - each other. We use the Bayesian…
Genotype-to-phenotype mappings translate genotypic variations such as mutations into phenotypic changes. Neutrality is the observation that some mutations do not lead to phenotypic changes. Studying the search trajectories in genotypic and…
Phenotype of biological systems needs to be robust against mutation in order to sustain themselves between generations. On the other hand, phenotype of an individual also needs to be robust against fluctuations of both internal and external…
Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which employ substantial specialization and division of labor. Unlike most other animals, humans…
This paper investigates the influence of genotype size on evolutionary algorithms' performance. We consider genotype compression (where genotype is smaller than phenotype) and expansion (genotype is larger than phenotype) and define…
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection does not predict long-term progress or advancement, nor does it provide a useful way to define or understand these concepts. Nevertheless, the history of life is marked by major trends that…
Evolutionary success depends on the capacity to adapt: organisms must respond to environmental challenges through both genetic innovation and lifetime learning. The gene-centric paradigm attributes evolutionary causality exclusively to…
Without contributing, defectors take more benefit from social resources than cooperators which is the reflection of a specific character of individuals. However, natural physical mechanisms of our society promote cooperation. Thus, in the…
The adaptation rate in theoretical models of biological evolution increases with the mutation rate but only to a point when mutations into lethal states cause extinction. One would expect that removing such states should be beneficial for…
We axiomatize the molecular-biology reasoning style, show compliance of the standard reference: Ptashne, A Genetic Switch, and present proof-theory-induced technologies to help infer phenotypes and to predict life cycles from genotypes. The…
Cells are able to generate phenotypic diversity both during development and in response to stressful and changing environments, aiding survival. The biologically and medically vital process of a cell assuming a functionally important fate…
Development combines three basic processes asymmetric --- cell division, signaling and gene regulation --- in a multitude of ways to create an overwhelming diversity of multicellular life-forms. Here, we attempt to chart this diversity…
Textual analysis of typical microbial genomes reveals that they have the statistical characteristics of a DNA sequence of a much shorter length. This peculiar property supports an evolutionary model in which a genome evolves by random…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…