What Have Gene Libraries Done for AIS?

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) have been shown to be useful, practical and realisable approaches to real-world problems. Most AIS implementations are based around a canonical algorithm such as clonotypic learning, which we may think of as individual, lifetime learning. Yet a species also learns. Gene libraries are often thought of as a biological mechanism for generating combinatorial diversity of antibodies. However, they also bias the antibody creation process, so that they can be viewed as a way of guiding the lifetime learning mechanisms. Over time, the gene libraries in a species will evolve to an appropriate bias for the expected environment (based on species memory). Thus gene libraries are a form of meta-learning which could be useful for AIS. Yet they are hardly ever used. In this paper we consider some of the possible benefits and implications of incorporating the evolution of gene libraries into AIS practice. We examine some of the issues that must be considered if the implementation is to be successful and beneficial.