Edit Distance And It's Application In Penna Model

Edit distance is published in 1966 by A. Levenshtein, it is used to calculate the similarityof two strings. Edit distance can be defined as the minimum cost of transforming one stringinto another through a sequence of weighted edit operations. Different from Hammingdistance, it can be used to calculate the similarity of two strings in different length. Editdistance has been applied widely in linguistics and biology.Penna model is a single species evolution model. Penna model is suitable for simulatinglarge species via computer, so it is used to study the properties of dynamic species. Forexample, it is used to establish a strategy to enlarge the species of red lobster without lowerthe profit. So far, Penna model is the most successful evolution model with age structures.In the first part of this paper the basics of edit distance and Perma model is showed. Thenedit distance is introduced into Penna model to create a new model which possess the essenceof standard Penna model but with more flexible mutate mechanism, and the new model can beextended to simulate species with different individual gene size. At last, the notion AverLD isintroduced to study the evolution of species gene after the species is quantitatively stable, theresult shows that without mutation the convergence of AverLD is 0, it implies the individualsof the species all has the same gene, and with mutation the convergence of AverLD is aconstant above 0.