news: Testing Darwin
Discover (02/05) Vol. 26, No. 2, P. 28; Zimmer, Carl
Scientists at Michigan State University's Digital Evolution Laboratory are using digital organisms to explore and test Darwin's theories. These organisms consist of command strings that can replicate themselves into tens of thousands of copies within minutes, and they can also mutate and compete with each other; the life cycle of each generation is tracked using the Avida software program. Researchers determined with Avida that digital organisms, like their real-world counterparts, evolve in spasms, and the software's flexibility and speed has encouraged them to put some of the most cherished tenets of evolutionary science to the test. One experiment concentrated on how complex organisms evolve from simple ones by documenting the evolution of a complex operation in which binary numbers are compared bit by bit to see if they are equal: The Avida team established rewards for simpler operations and bigger rewards for more sophisticated operations, and then watched as the digital organisms replicated for 16,000 generations; the experiment was repeated 50 times, and the organisms in the 23 successful tests evolved along different evolutionary paths, illustrating Darwin's theory that the same function can evolve in diverse ways. Another experiment explored how organisms continue to evolve despite seemingly unbreakable controls, and Digital Evolution Laboratory director Charles Ofria devised a scheme designed to halt adaptation by killing off organisms that exhibited beneficial mutations. The digital life-forms defied Ofria's best attempts to control their evolution by essentially "playing dead" and not processing numbers when he tested them for mutations. The Avida team is also developing new commands that will enable digital organisms to exchange information packages in a test for cooperation, and Ofria thinks a successful outcome would indicate that the organisms could maybe be coaxed into cooperatively solving real-world problems.
Scientists at Michigan State University's Digital Evolution Laboratory are using digital organisms to explore and test Darwin's theories. These organisms consist of command strings that can replicate themselves into tens of thousands of copies within minutes, and they can also mutate and compete with each other; the life cycle of each generation is tracked using the Avida software program. Researchers determined with Avida that digital organisms, like their real-world counterparts, evolve in spasms, and the software's flexibility and speed has encouraged them to put some of the most cherished tenets of evolutionary science to the test. One experiment concentrated on how complex organisms evolve from simple ones by documenting the evolution of a complex operation in which binary numbers are compared bit by bit to see if they are equal: The Avida team established rewards for simpler operations and bigger rewards for more sophisticated operations, and then watched as the digital organisms replicated for 16,000 generations; the experiment was repeated 50 times, and the organisms in the 23 successful tests evolved along different evolutionary paths, illustrating Darwin's theory that the same function can evolve in diverse ways. Another experiment explored how organisms continue to evolve despite seemingly unbreakable controls, and Digital Evolution Laboratory director Charles Ofria devised a scheme designed to halt adaptation by killing off organisms that exhibited beneficial mutations. The digital life-forms defied Ofria's best attempts to control their evolution by essentially "playing dead" and not processing numbers when he tested them for mutations. The Avida team is also developing new commands that will enable digital organisms to exchange information packages in a test for cooperation, and Ofria thinks a successful outcome would indicate that the organisms could maybe be coaxed into cooperatively solving real-world problems.
posted by A at 6:13 pm
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