Biological Justification For GEP

GEP, and particularly BGEP, have a really nice biological justification for their existence. While relating evolutionary computation to biology is not strictly necessary (it is mainly an optimization technique, not a study of evolution), inspiration from evolution is a way to legitimize a technique.
With BGEP, there are only 2 symbols used, 1 and 0. This is more like DNA, where there are 4, then GEP, where there are many. As with DNA, groups of loci determine what they will create by their order and contents. The things they create have a more complex structure (mRNA for example) just as the expression trees have a more complex structure then the linear gene that creates it. The next step is for the structure to create something else that will effect the environment and be involved in the fitness of the genetic material. In GEP this is the result of evaluating the expression tree, in biology it is the proteins created and their effects.

I am not a biologist, and my understanding of genetics is very limited, but I'm glad to see that what BGEP, and hopefully BPGEP if it every exists, are a complex evolutionary system that have separate genotype and phenotypes, as well as a progression of effects from linear to complex structures that ultimately determine fitness. This has the potential to be a very effective system, and I'm pretty excited to study it this summer for my independent research project.