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Darwinbots3 / Re: Chromosomes and Sexual Rproduction
« on: August 18, 2010, 12:52:22 AM »
Hmmm....what about making a cap on the number of vectors in the DNA proportional to body size?
I gave this some more thought today, and thought this could play out nicely:
-Chromosomes
These have no particular internal structure. They are discrete eg. you can't have start/stop commands randomly floating around, but mutations can 'physically' break and recombine chromosomes (as real block mutations do). In place of genes, chromosomes have inline logic. This minimizes the deviation from the current code while still maintaining the rough structure of real chromosomes.
-Plasmids
These will be the conventional cond/start/stop genes. Plasmids can reproduce and eject themselves independently (eg. viruses), and are separated from the chromosomes. This means that primitive species can still function with only plasmid DNA, and will also provide full compatibility with the current code.
Sexrepro will mix chromosomes as in traditional meiosis (not sure what happens with plasmids, I guess you just mix and match somehow), repro will duplicate the individual as in mitosis, and viral commands and delgene will take over the plasmid controls.
The main idea is that chromosomes control the cell's defining functions, while the plasmids are extra generic pieces of DNA, such as viruses, or something like poison genes.
I guess the no real pressure to keep DNA length small - but mutations very rarely cause insanely large strands to appear out of nowhere (with the exception of polyploidy, which is fatal in animals and usually causes sterility in others), so DNA growth is mainly caused by viruses - a virus inserting itself into a host is usually fatal, terminating that strand. The only real growth in DNA is caused by broken viruses-and I think junk DNA is supposed to make up very large chunks of our DNA, on which no pressure acts...
There is some physical limitations on the amount of DNA, I guess. Space is the ultimate one (although only relevant when a virus undergoes extreme amplification-Ebola comes to mind), but within limits of reason, a cell can only produce so much proteins and other materials to read and execute DNA - like having a computer with a billion processors all running from the same battery, to use your analogy.
I gave this some more thought today, and thought this could play out nicely:
-Chromosomes
These have no particular internal structure. They are discrete eg. you can't have start/stop commands randomly floating around, but mutations can 'physically' break and recombine chromosomes (as real block mutations do). In place of genes, chromosomes have inline logic. This minimizes the deviation from the current code while still maintaining the rough structure of real chromosomes.
-Plasmids
These will be the conventional cond/start/stop genes. Plasmids can reproduce and eject themselves independently (eg. viruses), and are separated from the chromosomes. This means that primitive species can still function with only plasmid DNA, and will also provide full compatibility with the current code.
Sexrepro will mix chromosomes as in traditional meiosis (not sure what happens with plasmids, I guess you just mix and match somehow), repro will duplicate the individual as in mitosis, and viral commands and delgene will take over the plasmid controls.
The main idea is that chromosomes control the cell's defining functions, while the plasmids are extra generic pieces of DNA, such as viruses, or something like poison genes.
I guess the no real pressure to keep DNA length small - but mutations very rarely cause insanely large strands to appear out of nowhere (with the exception of polyploidy, which is fatal in animals and usually causes sterility in others), so DNA growth is mainly caused by viruses - a virus inserting itself into a host is usually fatal, terminating that strand. The only real growth in DNA is caused by broken viruses-and I think junk DNA is supposed to make up very large chunks of our DNA, on which no pressure acts...
There is some physical limitations on the amount of DNA, I guess. Space is the ultimate one (although only relevant when a virus undergoes extreme amplification-Ebola comes to mind), but within limits of reason, a cell can only produce so much proteins and other materials to read and execute DNA - like having a computer with a billion processors all running from the same battery, to use your analogy.
).