Related papers: Does self-replication imply evolvability?
In an attempt to explain the uniqueness of the coding mechanism of living cells as contrasted with multi-species structure of ecosystems we examine two models of individuals with some replicative properties. In the first model the system…
Representations for black-box optimisation methods (such as evolutionary algorithms) are traditionally constructed using a delicate manual process. This is in contrast to the representation that maps DNAs to phenotypes in biological…
While modern physics and biology satisfactorily explain the passage from the Big Bang to the formation of Earth and the first cells to present-day life, respectively, the origins of biochemical life still remain an open question. Since…
This paper describes a 2D particle system in which autopoietic vesicles that are able to grow, repair, and reproduce can emerge from an initial random distribution of individual components. The reproduction process also exhibits inheritance…
Biological networks have evolved to be highly functional within uncertain environments while remaining extremely adaptable. One of the main contributors to the robustness and evolvability of biological networks is believed to be their…
There is overwhelming evidence that human intelligence is a product of Darwinian evolution. Investigating the consequences of self-modification, and more precisely, the consequences of utility function self-modification, leads to the…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
Advances in semiconductor technology are contributing to the increasing complexity in the design of embedded systems. Architectures with novel techniques such as evolvable nature and autonomous behavior have engrossed lot of attention. This…
The main deficiency of the algorithms running on digital computers nowadays is their inability to change themselves during the execution. In line with this, the paper introduces the so-called replicated algorithms, inspired by the concept…
There has been increasing concern within the machine learning community that we are in a reproducibility crisis. As many have begun to work on this problem, all work we are aware of treat the issue of reproducibility as an intrinsic binary…
The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…
Reproducibility is a confused terminology. In this paper, I take a fundamental view on reproducibility rooted in the scientific method. The scientific method is analysed and characterised in order to develop the terminology required to…
In their recent comment, Cockell et al. argue that the habitability of an environment is fundamentally a binary property; that is to say, an environment can either support the metabolic processes of a given organism or not. The habitability…
Dawkins' replicator-based conception of evolution has led to widespread mis-application selectionism across the social sciences because it does not address the paradox that inspired the theory of natural selection in the first place: how do…
In the article I study the evolutionary adaptivity of two simple population models, based on either altruistic or egoistic law of energy exchange. The computational experiments show the convincing advantage of the altruists, which brings us…
Emergence is a phenomenon taken for granted in science but also still not well understood. We have developed a model of artificial genetic evolution intended to allow for emergence on genetic, population and social levels. We present the…
The formation of DNA loops by proteins and protein complexes is ubiquitous to many fundamental cellular processes, including transcription, recombination, and replication. Here we review recent advances in understanding the properties of…
DNA replication is a process which is common to all domains of life yet different replication mechanisms are seen among different organisms. The mechanism of replication on such a structure is not yet understood. With this bigger picture in…
In living systems, we often see the emergence of the ingredients necessary for computation -- the capacity for information transmission, storage, and modification -- begging the question of how we may exploit or imitate such biological…
Biological information processing manifests a huge variety in its complexity and capability among different organisms, which presumably stems from the evolutionary optimization under limited computational resources. Starting from the…