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Thus, for this simple individual, a single unit ET is the “organism” and, in
this case, the expression of the genetic information ends with translation.
When the genome codes for more than one gene, each gene is independ-
ently translated as a sub-ET, and two different kinds of “organism” might be
formed: in the first kind, the sub-ETs are physically connected to one an-
other by a particular linking function; in the second kind, the sub-ETs work
together to solve the problem at hand but there are no direct connections
between them. Let's now make this clearer with two examples.
Consider, for instance, the following chromosome composed of three dif-
ferent genes (the tails are shown in bold):
012345678901234567890123456789
AOa
abaaaab
Nab
aaaaaab
INN
bababaa
(2.11)
It codes for three different sub-ETs (Figure 2.3), each one representing a
particular Boolean expression. Usually, these sub-ETs or sub-programs are
part of a bigger program in which the sub-ETs are linked by a particular
linking function. For instance, if we linked the sub-ETs one after the other by
the Boolean function OR or AND, two different programs would be repre-
sented by chromosome (2.11) above. Thus, for this individual, the expres-
sion of the genetic information starts with the translation of the sub-ETs, but
a.
012345678901234567890123456789
AOa
abaaaab
Nab
aaaaaab
INN
bababaa
b.
Sub-ET
1
Sub-ET
2
Sub-ET
3
A
N
a
a
O
NN
b
a
b
a
b
Figure 2.3.
Translation of GEP genes as Boolean sub-ETs.
a)
A three-genic
chromosome with the gene tails shown in bold.
b)
The sub-ETs codified by each
gene. Note that the full expression of the chromosome will require some kind of
interaction between the sub-ETs. Indeed, the program encoded in the chromosome
only makes sense if the interactions between sub-programs are specified. For
instance, three different programs would be obtained if the linking were done by
OR, AND, or IF.
