Evolutionary theory is formulated in terms of individuals that carry heritable information and
are subject to selective pressures. However, individuality itself is a trait that had to evolve–an …

The initiation and progression of cancers reflect the underlying process of somatic evolution,
in which the diversification of heritable phenotypes provides a substrate for natural selection …

Machine learning methods are increasingly employed to address challenges faced by
biologists. One area that will greatly benefit from this cross-pollination is the problem of …

Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life, likely occurred in aqueous
environments. While the role of water's chemistry in early life is well studied, the effects of …

The evolution of complex cellular life involved two major transitions: the encapsulation of self-
replicating genetic entities into cellular units and the aggregation of individual genes into a …

Valiant proposed to treat Darwinian evolution as a special kind of computational learning
from statistical queries. The statistical queries represent a genotype's fitness over a …

This study proposes a landscape-based scenario for the origin of viruses and cells, focusing
on the adaptability of preexisting replicons from the RNP (ribonucleoprotein) world. The …

Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual
organisms as they occur in nature were used to test features proposed to explain the …

In this thesis, we explore the fundamental evolutionary conflict between the individual
incentive to cheat and the collective incentive to be part of a cooperative group. Our focus is …

Evidence for the power of random variation and non-random selection to produce organisms
that are well-adapted to their environments has been extensively documented at various …