Theory 41/Plasticity vs Canalisation/Metabolic health
Flexible Metabolism Is Fragile
The claim
Metabolic flexibility trades against metabolic stability, so an organism that switches fuels readily is also one that can be pushed into a maladaptive state by the wrong substrate mix.
01Mechanism
Flexibility requires sensing and switching machinery; when the signal is wrong, the same machinery commits to the wrong fuel.
02Prediction
Disease risk should rise with flexibility under mismatch.
03Refutation
Risk independent of flexibility would remove the trade-off.