A common subject: Evolution through a computational lens. Two different communities: on the one hand, artificial life researchers use computational systems to understand emergent evolutionary processes and patterns such as complexity, robustness, evolvability and open-endedness; on the other hand, evolutionary bioinformatics researchers decipher patterns and processes in diverse domains of life on Earth using computational methods based on biological data. Both communities use simulations of living organisms but with different aims, objects, and methods, resulting in disjoint research corpuses. We propose Aevol 4b, an artificial life evolution simulator, and show that the data it produces can be successfully and interestingly processed using bioinformatics methods. This bridges the gap between the two fields and paves the way for fruitful exchanges between artificial life models and bioinformatic analysis methods.

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