Evolution of biological complexity

From: FMAJ1019@aol.com
Date: Sun Sep 10 2000 - 17:21:55 EDT

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    More and more papers are showing that evolutionary mechanisms can explain the
    evolution of biological complexity.

    I ran across this one on talk.origins

    http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4463

     Abstract

    To make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in
    biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously
    defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively
    evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the
    amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate
    the evolution of genomic complexity in populations
    of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that
    increase complexity. We show that, because natural
    selection forces genomes to behave as a natural "Maxwell Demon," within a
    fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced to increase.



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