Asymmetric cell division in artificial evolution

Increasingly often artificial evolutionary techniques are coupled with mechanisms abstracted from developmental biology. For instance, artificial cells endowed with genetic regulatory networks were used to evolve and develop simulated creatures. With the evolution of a simple vermicular structure it is shown that asymmetric cell division is useful for the positioning of cells and that this mechanism can be integrated with other developmental mechanisms such as genetic regulation and cell adhesion to get moving artificial creatures. Surprisingly, the movements were controlled by the genetic regulatory network alone without the need to evolve a neural structure.