Sudden and Steep Harsh Environment Results in Over Compensation in Digital Organisms.

Citation: Ang, DGY, Ling, MHT. 2021. Sudden and Steep Harsh Environment Results in Over-Compensation in Digital Organisms. EC Microbiology 17(7): 104-113.

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Adaptation to external environment to produce viable offspring is an important aspect of evolution. Although experimental studies adapting bacteria to various ecological niches had been carried out, they are usually time-consuming, labour-intensive, and represents one instance of life - biological life; hence, unable to generalize to all forms of life. Digital organisms (DOs), which are computer-simulated organisms, presents alternative life forms. In this study, DOs were used to evaluate ecological niche adaptation by measuring the fitness of the DOs in two varying external parameters (resembling oxygen and carbon). Two oxygen adaptation schemes (gradual and sudden) were tested in the context of two carbon environments (high and no carbon) while fitness is determined as the energy availability as the amount of metabolite E. Our results suggest that external oxygen decline impacts on energy production but sudden oxygen decline increases energy production regardless of carbon environment. Hence, sudden harsh oxygen deprivation may result in over-compensation in adaptation compared to gradual oxygen deprivation in both carbon environments.