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Published April 25, 2000 | Published
Journal Article Open

Evolution of biological complexity

Abstract

To make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show that, because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural "Maxwell Demon," within a fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced to increase.

Additional Information

© 2000 National Academy of Sciences. Edited by James F. Crow, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, and approved February 15, 2000 (received for review December 22, 1999). We thank A. Barr and R. E. Lenski for discussions. Access to a Beowulf system was provided by the Center for Advanced Computation Research at the California Institute of Technology. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

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