Efficient Agent-Based Models for Non-Genomic Evolution

Abstract

Modelling dynamical systems composed of aggregations of primitive proteins is critical to the field of astrobiological science involving early evolutionary structures and the origins of life. Unfortunately traditional non-multi-agent methods either require oversimplified models or are slow to converge to adequate solutions. This paper shows how to address these deficiencies by modelling the protein aggregations through a utility based multi-agent system. In this method each agent controls the properties of a set of proteins assigned to that agent. Some of these properties determine the dynamics of the system, such as the ability for some proteins to join or split other proteins, while additional properties determine the aggregation's fitness as a viable primitive cell. We show that over a wide range of starting conditions, there are mechanisms that allow protein aggregations to achieve high values of overall fitness. In addition through the use of agent-specific utilities that remain aligned with the overall global utility, we are able to reach these conclusions with 50 times fewer learning steps.