Evolutionary Modeling

This project will use digital organisms (populations of self-replicating and evolving computer programs) to investigate the dynamics of evolving systems. Specific research projects will include an examination of the mechanisms by which new information is incorporated into genomes to build complexity, how that information is distributed over many species to form complex ecosystems, and the tracking of information back in time to form new algorithms for phylogeny reconstruction (defining the evolutionary relatedness of organisms). Finally, we will use this material to develop a new type of genetic algorithm that works at the ecosystem level. These methods will help unambiguously classify different species and elucidate the balance between populations of species in natural ecosystems, including competition between organisms and bacterial adaptations in response to antibiotics.
Research Team: Richard Lenski (Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology), Charles Ofria (CSE), Robert Pennock (Lyman Briggs and Philosophy), Thomas Schmidt (MMG), and Eric Torng (CSE)