Artificial Life (hereafter ALife) is an interdisciplinary research field that has the purpose of gaining a better understanding of biological life by artificially synthesizing simple and novel forms of life, as well as reproducing lifelike properties of living systems. Synthesis of artificial cells, simulation of large-scale biological networks, intelligent use of exponentially growing amounts of biochemical data, exploitation of biological substrates for computation and control, and deployment of bio-inspired engineering are just some of the main issues of ALife and nowadays are cutting-edge topics.
ALife is at the intersection between a theoretical perspective, namely, the scientific explanations of different levels of life organization (e.g., molecules, compartments, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, societies, and collective and social phenomena) and advanced technological applications (bio-inspired algorithms and techniques for building up effective solutions such as in the fields of robotics, big data analysis, and computational medicine).
This special issue presents the top six articles—revised...