However! (and this is the second new part) Larger enzymes take more time and/or energy and resources to transcribe. As before enzymes are continually wearing out and needing to be replaced.
This still seems over complicated to me.
Just have a bunch of different specialization bits (enzymes if you like) that can be turned on or off. Possibly at different bit levels like you said.
Just keep it simple. You really don't need to model this at the molecular level. All we need are rules that
allow for a form of specialization.
I see an enzyme as a switch which can possibly have several states (10 maybe as an example)
You have a bank of these switches (maybe 10 again but it depends on how many different paths the robots can feed by) but you can only spend x amount of
specialization points on all of them combined. Imagine that x = 20. That leave a bank of 10, 10-state switches with a maximum amount of 20 total points.
If you bang up photosynthesis to 10 and then Nitrate (waste) metabolism to 5, you only have 5 more points to use elsewhere. Perhaps you might want to put those onto Sulfer metabolism so that you can survive near a smoker.
Successive generations could potentially lose the photosynthesis in favor of Sulfer and so become smoker specialists while others may move toward sunlight and lose the Sulfer specialization in favor of something else.
Thisnk of it as enzymes if you like but it is really just rules for how the bot is able to interact with the e-grid environment.
I really don't see the need to try and actually model real enzymes. It just seems pointless.
This method still leave a lot of specialization in the hands of the genes too.
Simple, easy, no hassle.
:D PY :D