Evolution of repressilators using a biologically-motivated model of gene expression

The evolution of development is an important ongoing question in developmental biology, and to study it, we examine evolution in the context of fundamental processes underlying development, gene expression and regulation. In this paper, we present the results of utilizing a biologically- motivated model which implements gene expression and regulation to evolve genetic regulatory networks that express proteins in an oscillatory manner similar to a "repressilator" network. The networks were artificially evolved via genetic algorithm by manually bootstrapping the initial population with a set of randomly generated networks. The genetic algorithm then utilizes a two-part strategy combining sudden small changes which alter connections in the network with a gradual "paring down" of the network to expose higher-fitness components.