Dr. Alex K. Lancaster works in the emerging discipline of evolutionary systems biology: involving a combination of empirical genomics and bioinformatics, collaborations with wet-lab experimentalists as well as mathematical modeling and simulation.
His research investigates the interplay of evolvability and robustness: how organisms can simultaneously generate phenotypic novelty, yet be buffered against the forces of genetic and environmental change. One major focus is understanding the cellular networks underpinning the genotype-phenotype map, and particularly the role of population-level variation in networks. A second focus is applying these insights to help identify the mechanistic underpinnings of human diseases, including cancer and autism.
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