title: Enzyme-like replication de novo in a microcontroller environment.
abstract: The desire to start evolution from scratch inside a computer memory is as old as computing. Here we demonstrate how viable computer programs can be established de novo in a Precambrian environment without supplying any specific instantiation, just starting with random bit sequences. These programs are not self-replicators, but act much more like catalysts. The microcontrollers used in the end are the result of a long series of simplifications. The objective of this simplification process was to produce universal machines with a human-readable interface, allowing software and/or hardware evolution to be studied. The power of the instruction set can be modified by introducing a secondary structure-folding mechanism, which is a state machine, allowing nontrivial replication to emerge with an instruction width of only a few bits. This state-machine approach not only attenuates the problems of brittleness and encoding functionality (too few bits available for coding, and too many instructions needed); it also enables the study of hardware evolution as such. Furthermore, the instruction set is sufficiently powerful to permit external signals to be processed. This information-theoretic approach forms one vertex of a triangle alongside artificial cell research and experimental research on the creation of life. Hopefully this work helps develop an understanding of how information—in a similar sense to the account of functional information described by Hazen et al.—is created by evolution and how this information interacts with or is embedded in its physico-chemical environment.
authors: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. uwe.tangen@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
authors: Uwe
authors: U
authors: Tangen
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004798:Enzymes / Q000378:metabolism*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes