Modularity, variation and variability in genetic representation

Nature uses a complex genotype-phenotype map to advance a relatively simple genotype space variational topology to an extremely complex phenotypic variational topology. This dissertation introduces a modular, fixed non-trivial, multi-layered genotype-phenotype map, incorporating an interpretation of the biological processes of transcription and translation into the representation of a Genetic Algorithm (GA), thereby introducing a more flexible phenotypic structure and increasing connectivity. A series of experiments are conducted to examine the impact of the representation on variation and variability, with results indicating that through the inclusion of the proposed multi-layered mapping, only a small fraction of genotypic mutations are adaptive. Results also suggest that slowing genetic drift has an important part to play in the evolution of a population, allowing the representation to foster the creation of highly connected neutral networks, altering genetic drift and changing the evolutionary trajectory by inducing variability.

Publisher

NUI Galway

Collections

University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)