METAMorph: Experimenting with Genetic Regulatory Networks for Artificial Development

We introduce METAMorph, an open source software platform for the experimental design of simulated cellular development processes using genomes encoded as genetic regulatory networks (GRNs). METAMorph allows researchers to design GRNs by hand and to visualise the resulting morphological growth process. As such, it is a tool to aid researchers in developing an understanding of the expressive properties of GRNs. We describe the software and present our preliminary observations in the form of techniques for realising some common structures.