Exploring regenerative mechanisms found in flatworms by artificial evolutionary techniques using genetic regulatory networks

The amazing self-repairing and self-assembling abilities of biological organisms are based on mechanisms, which once understood, have the far reaching promise to allow scientists to construct modular artefact mimicking these processes. In this line of research I investigated the possibility to evolve regenerating mechanisms in simulated, vermicular organisms. An artificial evolutionary system was developed able to evolve regenerative systems based on "cells" (modules). The performance of the evolutionary system relies on two mechanisms: firstly, genetic regulatory networks allowing to reduce the number of genetic parameters by informing whole groups of cells where they are and what to do and secondly, a specialized developmental mechanism, cell cleavage, which is able to specify in detail the cells after each cell division by distributing factors in the cells affecting their genes. It corresponds in many aspects to direct encoding scheme allowing to specify in detail the cells and it is possible to evolve recursive developmental schemes. The importance of cell lineage is its potential to get evolution started more easily, because information can be used specifically for one single cell.