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Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve
NSF ^ | May 8, 2003 | Staff

Posted on 05/08/2003 10:11:06 AM PDT by Nebullis

Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

Arlington, Va.—If the evolution of complex organisms were a road trip, then the simple country drives are what get you there. And sometimes even potholes along the way are important.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers, has used a kind of artificial life, or ALife, to create a road map detailing the evolution of complex organisms, an old problem in biology.

In an article in the May 8 issue of the international journal Nature, Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami report that the path to complex organisms is paved with a long series of simple functions, each unremarkable if viewed in isolation. "This project addresses a fundamental criticism of the theory of evolution, how complex functions arise from mutation and natural selection," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the division of environmental biology at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research through its Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative. "These simulations will help direct research on living systems and will provide understanding of the origins of biocomplexity."

Some mutations that cause damage in the short term ultimately become a positive force in the genetic pedigree of a complex organism. "The little things, they definitely count," said Lenski of Michigan State, the paper's lead author. "Our work allowed us to see how the most complex functions are built up from simpler and simpler functions. We also saw that some mutations looked like bad events when they happened, but turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time."

In the key phrase, "a long period of time," lies the magic of ALife. Lenski teamed up with Adami, a scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ofria, a Michigan State computer scientist, to further explore ALife.

Pennock, a Michigan State philosopher, joined the team to study an artificial world inside a computer, a world in which computer programs take the place of living organisms. These computer programs go forth and multiply, they mutate and they adapt by natural selection.

The program, called Avida, is an artificial petri dish in which organisms not only reproduce, but also perform mathematical calculations to obtain rewards. Their reward is more computer time that they can use for making copies of themselves. Avida randomly adds mutations to the copies, thus spurring natural selection and evolution. The research team watched how these "bugs" adapted and evolved in different environments inside their artificial world.

Avida is the biologist's race car - a really souped up one. To watch the evolution of most living organisms would require thousands of years – without blinking. The digital bugs evolve at lightening speed, and they leave tracks for scientists to study.

"The cool thing is that we can trace the line of descent," Lenski said. "Out of a big population of organisms you can work back to see the pivotal mutations that really mattered during the evolutionary history of the population. The human mind can't sort through so much data, but we developed a tool to find these pivotal events."

There are no missing links with this technology.

Evolutionary theory sometimes struggles to explain the most complex features of organisms. Lenski uses the human eye as an example. It's obviously used for seeing, and it has all sorts of parts - like a lens that can be focused at different distances - that make it well suited for that use. But how did something so complicated as the eye come to be?

Since Charles Darwin, biologists have concluded that such features must have arisen through lots of intermediates and, moreover, that these intermediate structures may once have served different functions from what we see today. The crystalline proteins that make up the lens of the eye, for example, are related to those that serve enzymatic functions unrelated to vision. So, the theory goes, evolution borrowed an existing protein and used it for a new function.

"Over time," Lenski said, "an old structure could be tweaked here and there to improve it for its new function, and that's a lot easier than inventing something entirely new."

That's where ALife sheds light.

"Darwinian evolution is a process that doesn't specify exactly how the evolving information is coded," says Adami, who leads the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. "It affects DNA and computer code in much the same way, which allows us to study evolution in this electronic medium."

Many computer scientists and engineers are now using processes based on principles of genetics and evolution to solve complex problems, design working robots, and more. Ofria says that "we can then apply these concepts when trying to decide how best to solve computational problems."

"Evolutionary design," says Pennock, "can often solve problems better than we can using our own intelligence."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ai; crevolist
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To: RightWingNilla
Would these include dinosaur fossils?

I think you'd need to consult Carl Everett for that information.

421 posted on 05/08/2003 3:02:30 PM PDT by Grando Calrissian
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To: nmh
Something as sophisticated as the human body, didn't evolve out of nothing.

Where did Cain and Abel's wives evolve from?

422 posted on 05/08/2003 3:02:56 PM PDT by sakic
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To: RightWingNilla
"Would those include dinosaur fossils?"

Did you not read the whole part about the FLOOD? That's why there were mass deaths. The ones taken on the ark were the only ones that survived, and when you're down to 2 each, and carnivores need to eat, it's pretty clear that the big animals are going to be the ones that go.
423 posted on 05/08/2003 3:03:33 PM PDT by AmericanAge
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To: RightWingNilla
persperational placemarker
424 posted on 05/08/2003 3:04:47 PM PDT by longshadow
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To: sakic
1) The bible never says that Cain and Abel were the only children Adam and Eve had.
2) Althouh seemingly less likely, there is nothing that states that God didn't create more people.
425 posted on 05/08/2003 3:04:47 PM PDT by AmericanAge
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To: f.Christian; gore3000
evolution, as I have said many times is ANTI-SCIENCE.

Where is g3 these days? He's missing a lot of opportunities with all these newby posers.

426 posted on 05/08/2003 3:05:11 PM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Grando Calrissian
Carl Everett

Uh...The outfielder for the Red Sox?!

427 posted on 05/08/2003 3:05:16 PM PDT by RightWingNilla
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To: sakic
Don't you know that Caine killed Able? So there was Adam, Eve, and Caine, so who was Caines wife?

Only one answer there if you ask me.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I am sure a fundamentalist will correct me.
428 posted on 05/08/2003 3:05:18 PM PDT by Aric2000 (Are you on Grampa Dave's team? I am!! $5 a month is all it takes, come join!!!)
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To: Grando Calrissian
My coffee cups do.

Are they in Kinderhook, New York? Do you have six of them?

429 posted on 05/08/2003 3:05:44 PM PDT by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: AmericanAge
Was there really a need to mention it??

If we are to have any part in God's plan for the end times, yes.

Look at all of the other religions of the time. They talk about ocean-rivers, or lands of beasts, or other such things. The bible deliberately doesn't mention what is beyond. God has a plan for humanity; He has made it quite clear that He wants us to learn, to discover. But also in the world, He has placed temptations. False prophets. Deception.

His plan apparently doesn't include us.

A true believer is not led astray. Are you?

I'm agnostic. Not a "true believer", although I am trying to figure out this big old world, I suspect that God is not only much different than we imagine, but much different than we CAN imagine...

430 posted on 05/08/2003 3:06:01 PM PDT by null and void
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To: AmericanAge
Because it does help the mold. That's all it needs to do. It doesn't need to help us...
431 posted on 05/08/2003 3:07:12 PM PDT by null and void
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To: Right Wing Professor
I am quite aware of what faith is. Faith is... the evidence of things not seen.

If that is faith, then you believe in gravity by faith. You believe in the wind by faith. You believe in black holes, subatomic particles, dark matter and dark energy by faith. You see the results but not the thing causing the results. In the same way, the universe is the result, but you refuse to believe in the Cause of the result even though there is no credible alternate explanation. Does science say there is no cause for gravity? Does it claim the trees move by themselves in concert or does it acknowledge the wind?

432 posted on 05/08/2003 3:07:18 PM PDT by Dataman
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To: Aric2000
What side would that be Dataman?

Why the outside of course!

433 posted on 05/08/2003 3:08:03 PM PDT by Dataman
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
The golden keyboard belongs to me now !
434 posted on 05/08/2003 3:08:12 PM PDT by f.Christian (( Marching orders: comfort the afflicted // afflict the comfortable ! ! ))
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To: AmericanAge
Ummm, it's 2 each of the Unkosher animals, 7 pairs of the Kosher ones. Check it out...
435 posted on 05/08/2003 3:09:00 PM PDT by null and void
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To: null and void
"Was there really a need to mention it??

If we are to have any part in God's plan for the end times, yes. "

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. :)

I've known people who claimed to be agnostics. They almost always end up as atheists after a few years, so I don't trust the word. You'll probably end up like the author of cretinism vs. evilution (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/)

436 posted on 05/08/2003 3:09:55 PM PDT by AmericanAge
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To: AmericanAge
Did you not read the whole part about the FLOOD?

You reminded me of this.

For those based in reality, it a quite a laffer.

437 posted on 05/08/2003 3:10:12 PM PDT by RightWingNilla
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To: Dataman
Geez, there's a song about you.

"Don't know much about science...." etc etc.
438 posted on 05/08/2003 3:10:34 PM PDT by Aric2000 (Are you on Grampa Dave's team? I am!! $5 a month is all it takes, come join!!!)
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To: AmericanAge
...Penicillin is a creature. ...

Worthy of wildly elliptical comments.

439 posted on 05/08/2003 3:11:02 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: null and void
"Ummm, it's 2 each of the Unkosher animals, 7 pairs of the Kosher ones. Check it out..."

What did I say that contradicted that statement?
440 posted on 05/08/2003 3:11:11 PM PDT by AmericanAge
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