Extent of Mutational Capability

While many of the genetic evolution programs evolve design parameters, some evolve running programs that compete directly against one another.--Percy

God, it's been years since I researched this. Take a look at my opening post in the thread Percy's Alife Project and then at Message 53. This thread reflects ideas I picked up from studying other genetic simulation programs. I think my plan was to invent a programming language that would control how objects behaved in an environment. An object's programming would evolve randomly by inserting, deleting or modifying a line of programming. An object could become food either by dying or by being "attacked" by another object. Its energy requirements and its value as food would be a function of its size (number of lines of code).When I posted at the end of the thread that I was entering a busy period, it was just because it was the Thanksgiving to Christmas period. I fully expected to return to the effort in the new year, but my mother became ill just before the new year and I became her care giver for a few months into May. I never did return to this, but looking at this ancient thread now it looks it would be a lot of fun.--Percy

I think you'll get broad agreement that "the odds are fantastically small that a protein could have formed by chance," regardless of whose calculation of the odds is correct. The odds of random formation aren't relevant because proteins don't form by chance They're constructed in cells according to the blueprint provided by DNA.We don't know what the first proteins were like, but we don't think they came about by chance. We don't think life is some fantastically unlikely accident.--Percy