Computer modeled Artificial Beings Evolve Realistically

Artificial Beings Evolve Realistically

Technology Research News June 3, 2003

For the past couple hundred years, scientists have studied genetics using organisms like peas, fruit flies and viruses, whose lifespans are much shorter than ours.

In the past decade or so, computer scientists have worked with genetic algorithms, which can produce many generations much more quickly and can track each change more closely than is possible using real organisms. But these virtual organisms evolve much more simply than the real thing.

Researchers from Michigan State University, the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Los Angeles have found a way to use software to more closely mimic the way real organisms evolve.

A clearer understanding of DNA's methods could make software more stable, communications lines and drugs more efficient, and provide a better understanding of evolutionary relationships and of the ways environmental stresses like radiation affect genes.

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