Genelife is a family of cellular automata models in which each cell has a genome which influences the local rules, developed by Norman Packard and John McCaskill. Like the Game of Life, the core of the models, including the choice of ancestor for new live cells, is deterministic. Unlike the Game of Life, the model has a rich repertoire of dynamical states that are robust towards small perturbations. It includes an analysis package which characterises the complimentary information processing taking place in terms of spatiotemporal patterns and genealogies. Making use of efficient hash tables to store all spatial patterns (connected components) and genomes encountered in the simulation allows filters for novelty to be constructed and evolutionary activity to be recorded.
Genelife has also been connected via a python interface to the Daptics experiment optimisation and discovery platform by Norman Packard.
Genelife will be available shortly in source code as a GitHub repository genelife1.