Evolvability is the ability of a biological system to produce phenotypic variation that is both
heritable and adaptive. It has long been the subject of anecdotal observations and …

Epistasis occurs when the effect of a mutation depends on its carrier's genetic background.
Despite increasing evidence that epistasis for fitness is common, its role during evolution is …

We are part of Nature, not separate from it. We rely on Nature to provide us with food, water
and shelter; regulate our climate and disease; maintain nutrient cycles and oxygen …

The same mutation can have different effects in different individuals. One important reason
for this is that the outcome of a mutation can depend on the genetic context in which it …

Quantitatively linking the composition and function of microbial communities is a major
aspiration of microbial ecology. Microbial community functions emerge from a complex web …

The pace and unpredictability of evolution are critically relevant in a variety of modern
challenges, such as combating drug resistance in pathogens and cancer, understanding …

Epistatic interactions between mutations add substantial complexity to adaptive landscapes
and are often thought of as detrimental to our ability to predict evolution. Yet, patterns of …

Fitness landscapes are often described in terms of 'peaks' and 'valleys', indicating an
intuitive low-dimensional landscape of the kind encountered in everyday experience. The …

Understanding how genotypes map onto phenotypes, fitness, and eventually organisms is
arguably the next major missing piece in a fully predictive theory of evolution. We refer to this …

Biological technologies are fundamentally unlike any other because biology evolves.
Bioengineering therefore requires novel design methodologies with evolution at their core …