Nicolas Oros
Self-replication, evolution and sex in cellular automata
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During my master in 2006, I created a simple evolutionary system, sexyloop, on a deterministic ten-state five-neighbour cellular automaton (CA)
where self-reproducing loops have the capability of sex. This work was supervised by
Professor Chrystopher L. Nehaniv.
With this ability, the loops are capable of transferring genetic material into other loops.
This work was based on Sayama's evoloop which was transformed by adding a new state and new rules.
The evoloop model showed an emergent evolutionary process only due to an adaptation of the loops to interaction in the environment;
and after a certain time, all the individuals capable of self-reproduction belonged to the smallest species 4 which reproduced the fastest.
[IEEE Xplore]
In 2008, during the second year of my PhD, the Adaptive Systems Research Group employed me as casual staff to continue this work. With the collaboration of Chrystopher L. Nehaniv, I created the F-sexyloop using a twelve-state five-neighbour cellular automaton (CA) based on the Sexyloop. In the F-sexyloop, the loops can carry a sex gene used to facilitate the transfer of genetic material from a loop to another. This gene is analogous to the F factor plasmid in bacterial conjugation which confers the capacity to act as a donor of genetic material (including the gene itself). Therefore, the sex gene could potentially be maintained in the population during evolution or disappear. In a wide variety of cases, the sex gene persists over evolutionary time and is present in the genomes of the dominant species. [pdf]
F-Sexyloop
Download here: F-sexyloop_src.zip