LJ:REF:NATURE's Journal - Day

5:32PM - The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features by Lenski et al. [May 8th, 2003]

Article.

Excerpt: A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital organisms—computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. Populations of digital organisms often evolved the ability to perform complex logic functions requiring the coordinated execution of many genomic instructions. Complex functions evolved by building on simpler functions that had evolved earlier, provided that these were also selectively favoured. However, no particular intermediate stage was essential for evolving complex functions. The first genotypes able to perform complex functions differed from their non-performing parents by only one or two mutations, but differed from the ancestor by many mutations that were also crucial to the new functions. In some cases, mutations that were deleterious when they appeared served as stepping-stones in the evolution of complex features. These findings show how complex functions can originate by random mutation and natural selection.

NSF press release here.

Excerpt: 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. ( Read more... )

Slashdot thread here.

post Excerpt: As someone who was actually working on Avida at the time and visited Microsoft Research in Redmond with Charles and Chris (Ofria and Adami respectively). I just thought I'd say a few things. ( Read more... )

IdahoEv post Excerpt: For the record, I'm one of Dr. Adami's grad students in (The Digital Life Lab) at Caltech. Most of the programming is done at our sister lab in Michigan. ( Read more... )

Dr. Charles A. Ofria post Excerpt: To add one more comment to this (from the Michigan lab mentioned above) we'll have a Windows version of the software out "real soon now". Just this past week we've gotten everything compiled under Visual C++, and are hammering out the last few major bugs. We'll put up a beta as soon as its reasonably solid.