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C. FERREIRA Invited Tutorial Presented at WSC6, 2001

Gene Expression Programming in Problem Solving

Gene Expression Programming: An Introduction
 
In contrast to its analogous cellular gene expression, GEP is rather simple. The main players in GEP are only two: the chromosomes and the expression trees (ETs), being the latter the expression of the genetic information encoded in the chromosomes. As in nature, the process of information decoding is called translation. And this translation implies obviously a kind of code and a set of rules. The genetic code is very simple: a one-to-one relationship between the symbols of the chromosome and the functions or terminals they represent. The rules are also very simple: they determine the spatial organization of the functions and terminals in the ETs and the type of interaction between sub-ETs.

In GEP there are therefore two languages: the language of the genes and the language of ETs, and knowing the sequence or structure of one, is knowing the other. In nature, despite being possible to infer the sequence of proteins given the sequence of genes and vice versa, we practically know nothing about the rules that determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins. But in GEP, thanks to the simple rules that determine the structure of ETs and their interactions, it is possible to infer immediately the phenotype given the sequence of a gene, and vice versa. This bilingual and unequivocal system is called Karva language.

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