Steering Evolution and Biological Adaptation Strategically: Computational Game Theory and Opponent Exploitation for Treatment Planning, Drug Design, and Synthetic Biology∗

Living organisms adapt to challenges through evolution and adaptation. These survival mechanisms have proven to be a key difficulty in developing therapies, since the challenged organisms develop resistance. It would be desirable to harness evolution/adaptation for therapeutic, technological, and scientific goals. I propose steering them strategically using computational game theory and opponent exploitation techniques. A sequential contingency plan for steering evolution/adaptation is constructed computationally for the setting at hand. For example, for therapeutics, I propose modeling this as a (zero-sum) imperfectinformation game between a treater and a disease, with potentially both sequential and simultaneous moves.