Artificial Embryology and Cellular Differentiation

The broad aim of this chapter is to create an awareness that self assembling, "artificial embryological" type systems need to be studied, so that future molecular scale technologies (Drexler, 1992) will be able to build machines which have too many components for sequential mechanical assembly. With this broader aim in mind, a more concrete aim is to introduce the concept of embryological differentiation into Genetic Algorithms. Traditionally, GAs have contained such ideas as reproductive fitness, crossover, mutation, etc, but nothing equivalent to the way genes switch on and off in natural embryogenesis. The ideas of differentiation are used in this chapter to pursue a third aim, namely to try to grow nonconvex artificial shapes of colonies of cells in reproductive cellular automata. Earlier publications aimed at creating an "Artificial Embryology" resulted in the growth of successful convex shapes but nonconvex shapes failed to evolve (e.g. de Garis, 1992b).