A genetic engineering approach to genetic algorithms

We present an extension to the standard genetic algorithm (GA), which is ba sed on concepts of genetic engineering. The motivation is to discover usefu l and harmful genetic materials and then execute an evolutionary process in Such a way that the population becomes increasingly composed of useful gen etic material and increasingly free of the harmful genetic material. Compar ed to the standard GA, it provides some computational advantages as well as a tool for automatic generation of hierarchical genetic representations sp ecifically tailored to suit certain classes of problems.