A Few New Features for Genetic Algorithms

The project described in this paper attempts to apply insight gained from studying biological systems to a conventional Genetic Algorithm. Natural genes are contained on a chromosome, surrounded by long sequences of "waste" DNA. Useful genes are selected from amid the waste by the operation of RNA polymerase. Natural selection also occurs within relatively large groups; small populations tend to die out from a lack of genetic variation. We believe both of these features are relevant in the application of Genetic Algorithms to very complex problems. Individuals in our experiment are single chromosomes which contain genes of varying length. These genes are evaluated as potential solutions to Hamilton Path problems; however, the mechanism is general enough to apply to many other problem cases. Operations on these individuals include the traditional genetic manipulations: mutation, crossover, inversion, and recombination. We added to this set a shift operation, which is shown to be effecti..