Fractal proteins are an evolvable method of mapping genotype to phenotype through a developmental process, where genes are expressed into proteins comprised of subsets of the Mandelbrot Set. The resulting network of gene and protein interactions can be designed by evolution to produce specific patterns that in turn can be used to solve problems. In this paper, adaptive developmental programs, capable of developing different solutions in response to different signals from an environment, are investigated. The evolvability of solutions and the capability of these solutions to survive damage is assessed. Evolution is used to create a fractal gene regulatory network (GRN) that calculates the squareroot of the input (its environment). This is compared with a GP-evolved squareroot function and a human-designed squareroot function. The programs are damaged by corrupting their compiled executable code, and the ability for each of them to survive such damage is assessed. Experiments demonstrate...
Peter J. Bentley