Digital Evolution

Rich Lenski decided he was onto a good thing from his very first encounter with digital evolution. It all began when he used the technology in which artificial organisms in the form of computer code evolve independently by selfreplicating, mutating, and competing to re-examine an earlier study with bacteria. The original study had contradicted ‘some influential theory’ suggesting that random mutations show a systematic tendency towards synergistic interactions. His digital results, he discovered, matched his organic ones. ‘It’s great when these two powerful experimental systems agree, because it suggests some generality about the evolution of genetic architectures’, recalls Lenski, professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University (MSU). ‘But even if the digital and biological realms sometimes come into scientific conflict, it would only lead one to ask why and then probe the relevant factors more deeply’.