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Cited by 596

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Evolution of biological complexity

Open access
Adami, Christoph, Ofria, Charles, Collier, Travis C.·2000·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.97.9.4463
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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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Show all 2 references

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Metadata

Authors
Adami, C., Ofria, C., & Collier, T. C.
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2000-04-25
Volume
97
Issue
9
Pages
4463-4468
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.97.9.4463
OpenAlex
W2162170584
Cited by
596
References
2
FWCI
9.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evolution of biological complexity. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1073/pnas.97.9.4463
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Adami, C., Ofria, C., & Collier, T. C. (2000). Evolution of biological complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.97.9.4463

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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