Evolution of genetic organization in digital organisms

Abstract

We examine the evolution of expression patterns and the organization of genetic information in populations of self-replicating digital organisms. Seeding the experiments with a linearly expressed ancestor, we witness the development of complex, parallel secondary expression patterns. Using principles from information theory, we demonstrate an evolutionary pressure towards overlapping expressions causing variation (and hence further evolution) to sharply drop. Finally, we compare the overlapping sections of dominant genomes to those portions which are singly expressed and observe a significant difference in the entropy of their encoding.