Adapting to Adaptations: Behavioural Strategies that are Robust to Mutations and Other Organisational-Transformations

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Computational biology
• Systems biology

Background:

• Organismal responses to environmental changes can be altered by genetic mutations or symbiotic infections.
• Traditional behavioral models often focus on external environmental cues (exteroception).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the potential of interoceptive behavior for enhancing organismal robustness against internal state transformations.
• To explore the role of interoception in adaptive evolution and synthetic biology.

Main Methods:

• A minimalistic computational model was developed to simulate interoceptive and exteroceptive behaviors.
• The model analyzed the organism-environment interaction dynamics.

Main Results:

• Interoceptive behavior, by prioritizing internal state, confers robustness against organizational transformations.
• The asymmetrical relationship between organism and environment underpins the robustness of interoception.
• Interoception allows responses to internal state, environment, and their interaction, unlike exteroception.

Conclusions:

• Interoceptive strategies can provide resilience to internal changes, crucial for organismal adaptation.
• Interoception may have been vital for early life's adaptive evolution.
• Interoceptive mechanisms offer a promising avenue for engineering robust synthetic life-forms.