Devo Co-evolution of Shape and Metabolism for an Artificial Organ

“Epigenetic Tracking” is an evo-devo method to generate arbitrary 2d or 3d shapes; as such, it belongs to the field of “artificial embryology”. In silico experiments have proved the effectiveness of the method in devo-evolving any kind of shape, of any complexity (in terms of number of cells, number of colours, etc.); being shape complexity a metaphor for organismal complexity, such simulations established its potential to generate the complexity typical of biological systems. Furthermore, it has also been shown how the underlying model of development is able to produce the artificial version of key biological phenomena such as embryogenesis, the presence of “junk DNA”, the phenomenon of ageing and the process of carcinogenesis. In this paper the model is enriched by adding computational capabilities to cells (besides spatial position and colour); the cells endowed with such properties constitute the nodes of an artificial “metabolic network”, able to exchange signals and to process the equivalent of chemical substances. The potential of the extended model is evaluated in a computer simulation aimed at “devo co-evolving” shape and metabolism for an artificial organ.