Strong segregation promotes self-destructive cooperation.

Self-destructive cooperators, which sacrifice themselves for others, challenge traditional group selection theory, as costs often exceed individual benefits. We predict self-destructive cooperators can persist in highly segregated environments where populations are primarily divided into homogenous groups originating from one or two founders. In such contexts, the benefits of self-destructive cooperators remain within homogeneous groups of self-destructive cooperators, preserving the sacrifice value and ensuring its maintenance.

Pathway Evolution Through a Bottlenecking-Debottlenecking Strategy and Machine Learning-Aided Flux Balancing.

The evolution of pathway enzymes enhances the biosynthesis of high-value chemicals, crucial for pharmaceutical, and agrochemical applications. However, unpredictable evolutionary landscapes of pathway genes often hinder successful evolution. Here, the presence of complex epistasis is identifued within the representative naringenin biosynthetic pathway enzymes, hampering straightforward directed evolution.