Alewife Systems Memo 31

Adaptive graph computations for the study of the evolution of genomes are being conducted on a CM-2 Connection Machine and on the Alewife Simulator. The relative merits of the two different architectures of these machines should be examined in order to determine what types of simulations are more suitable for each. 1 Introduction. Natural selection acting upon the total combination of genes of an organism (the entire genotype), is a predominant cause of organic evolution. Through selection, the fitness of organisms increases leading to greater and greater adaptation, which is the hallmark of evolution. The genotype of an organism can consist of up to about 10 5 individual genes, each at a particular position or "locus." J. B. S. Haldane (1931) observed that if selection involved m loci, and there were 2 possible genic types or "alleles" at each locus, the possible genotypes of any organism could be represented as the vertices of an m\Gammadimensional hypercube (with 2 m vertices)...