I rehearse two issues around the commentary of Whigham and colleagues. (1) There really are many more reasons than those given as to why natural evolution cannot reasonably find or select the ‘optimal’ individual. (2) A series of experimental molecular biology programmes, known generically as directed evolution, can use operators and selection schemes that natural evolution cannot. When developed further using the methods of synthetic biology, there are no operators or schemes for in silico evolution that cannot be applied precisely to directed evolution. The issues raised apply only to natural evolution but not to directed evolution.

中文翻译：

---

定向进化的进化算法和合成生物学：Peter A. Whigham、Grant Dick 和 James Maclaurin 对“进化算法中基因型到表型的映射”的评论

我围绕惠格姆及其同事的评论排练了两个问题。(1) 对于自然进化无法合理地找到或选择“最佳”个体，确实有比给出的更多的原因。(2) 一系列实验分子生物学程序，通称为定向进化，可以使用自然进化不能使用的算子和选择方案。当使用合成生物学方法进一步开发时，计算机进化的算子或方案都不能精确地应用于定向进化。提出的问题仅适用于自然进化，不适用于定向进化。