Evolving Your Own Life: Introducing Biogenesis

Joey Bernard — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 14:17:54 +0000

Much of the software I've covered in the past has focused on engineering, chemistry or physics. However, a growing number of software packages are being written to apply computational resources to problems in biology. So in this article, I want to look at one particular package for biology named Biogenesis.

Biogenesis provides a platform where you can create entire ecosystems of lifeforms and see how they interact and how the system as a whole evolves over time.

You always can get the latest version from the project's main website, but it also should be available in the package management systems for most distributions. For Debian-based distributions, install Biogenesis with the following command:


sudo apt-get install biogenesis

If you do download it directly from the project website, you also need to have a Java virtual machine installed in order to run it.

To start it, you either can find the appropriate entry in the menu of your desktop environment, or you simply can type biogenesis in a terminal window. When it first starts, you will get an empty window within which to create your world.

Figure 1. When you first start Biogenesis, you get a blank canvas so you can start creating your world.

The first step is to create a world. If you have a previous instance that you want to continue with, click the Game→Open menu item and select the appropriate file. If you want to start fresh, click Game→New to get a new world with a random selection of organisms.

Figure 2. When you launch a new world, you get a random selection of organisms to start your ecosystem.

The world starts right away, with organisms moving and potentially interacting immediately. However, you can pause the world by clicking on the icon that is second from the right in the toolbar. Alternatively, you also can just press the p key to pause and resume the evolution of the world.

At the bottom of the window, you'll find details about the world as it currently exists. There is a display of the frames per second, along with the current time within the world. Next, there is a count of the current population of organisms. And finally, there is a display of the current levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide. You can adjust the amount of carbon dioxide within the world either by clicking the relevant icon in the toolbar or selecting the World menu item and then clicking either Increase CO2 or Decrease CO2.

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Biology

Evolving Your Own Life: Introducing Biogenesis