Synapsing Variable Length Crossover: Biologically Inspired Crossover for Variable Length Genomes

Abstract

Biological Crossover occurs during the early stages of meiosis. During this process the chromosomes undergoing crossover are synapsed together at a number of homogenous sequence sections, it is within such synapsed sections that crossover occurs. The SVLC (Synapsing Variable Length Crossover) Algorithm recurrently synapses homogenous genetic sequences together in order of length. The genomes are considered to be flexible with crossover only being permitted within the synapsed sections. Consequently, common sequences are automatically preserved with only the genetic differences being exchanged, independent of the length of such differences. In addition to providing a rationale for variable length crossover it also provides a genotypic similarity metric for variable length genomes enabling standard niche formation techniques to be utilised. In a simple variable length test problem the SVLC algorithm outperforms current variable length crossover techniques.