Optimal evolutionary control for artificial selection on molecular phenotypes

Understand

Controlling an evolving population is an important task in modern molecular genetics, including directed evolution for improving the activity of molecules and enzymes, in breeding experiments in animals and in plants, and in devising public health strategies to suppress evolving pathogens.

• An optimal intervention to direct evolution should be designed by considering its impact over an entire stochastic evolutionary trajectory that follows.
• As a result, a seemingly suboptimal intervention at a given time can be globally optimal as it can open opportunities for desirable actions in the future.
• Here, we propose a feedback control formalism to devise globally optimal artificial selection protocol to direct the evolution of molecular phenotypes.