A recurrent theme in evolutionary biology is to contrast natural selection and developmental
constraint–two forces pitted against each other as competing explanations for organismal …

The theory of evolution links random variation and selection to incremental adaptation. In a
different intellectual domain, learning theory links incremental adaptation (eg, from positive …

The design of structurally diverse enzymes is constrained by long-range interactions that are
necessary for accurate folding. We introduce an atomistic and machine learning strategy for …

Praise for the first edition:… superb, beautifully written and organized work that takes an
engineering approach to systems biology. Alon provides nicely written appendices to …

The Flexible Phenotype attempts a true synthesis of physiology, behaviour, and ecology by
developing an empirical argument that describes the intimate connections between …

Evolution in time-varying environments naturally leads to adaptable biological systems that
can easily switch functionalities. Advances in the synthesis of environmentally responsive …

Robustness seems to be the opposite of evolvability. If phenotypes are robust against
mutation, we might expect that a population will have difficulty adapting to an environmental …

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are well aware that natural and sexual selection do
not operate on traits in isolation, but instead act on combinations of traits. This long …

Environmentally induced phenotypes have been proposed to initiate and bias adaptive
evolutionary change toward particular directions. The potential for this to happen depends in …

Abstract Development introduces structured correlations among traits that may constrain or
bias the distribution of phenotypes produced. Moreover, when suitable heritable variation …