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Mutation protection

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jknilinux:
Hi,

I just noticed that, whenever there is a mutation in real-life organism, it almost never occurs in a vital area, like a metabolic pathway, even though such vital areas make up most of our DNA. Therefore, most organisms must have some sort of mutation protection for their vital genes. So, for DB3, or maybe even the next version of DB2 (since it should be an easy change), we should add a feature where a coder can select which portions of the bot's DNA are vital for life, like the reproduction code, and those portions will be, say, ten times less likely to get a mutation. That way, we will never have to deal with something "evolving" until it's unable to eat. What do you think?

EricL:
I love this idea.  I have loved this idea for years.  My very first DB post in the Newbie forum years ago was on this subject.

I favor a scheme where DNA can be decorated in some fashion, perhaps with in-line commands that increment or decrement the mutation probability for subsequent base pairs.  I would love to see a concrete and specific suggestion along these lines in the Suggestions forum and would give such high priority for implementation.  Such a discussion may already exist in fact if memory serves.  There has been much discussion on this subject in the past.

Numsgil:
My thinking for this is that Codules (essentially equivalent to functions in other languages) would have mutation multipliers assigned to them.  I might assign a cost (in nrg or time) during reproduction based on a composite mutation rate, but I'm not sure if that part mirrors real life properly.

EricL:
I favor an approach that is not tied to gene structure in any way such that any part of a gene, multiple genes, parts there of or any other sequence including non-coding sequences can be so decorated.  Hence my in-line suggestion in which the multiplier/de-multiplier itself is in fact a base pair.  In this way the mutation multiplier/de-multiplier itself can be subject to mutation and protected or increased mutation probability through its own decoration.

Numsgil:
I'm just not a fan of decorating the DNA stream with no-ops.  It's one thing for the text representation of the DNA to have that stuff done inline, but the final representation in code should not have metadata buried in with the base pairs, IMO.  I just don't like it.  Metadata should sit on top of the base pairs, in the same way that regulatory proteins sit on top of the DNA instead of inline with it.

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