TRON: Transferring Naturally Evolved Network Architectures into Neuroevolution

Konstantinos Zacharopoulos, Alexandra Bekou, Jose M Serradell, Foteini Paraskevopoulou, Apostolos Fournaris +2

Neural architecture search (NAS) is challenging because of the vast, non-linear space of artificial neural network (ANN) topologies. Evolutionary methods can generate architectures, but their effectiveness is limited by difficulties in preserving functional organization during mutation and recombination. Naturally evolved biological networks may provide organizational principles that support adaptation and evolvability. Here, we introduce TRON (TRansfer Of Natural networks), a neuroevolution framework that uses experimentally characterized protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks as architectural priors. Instead of starting from random topologies, TRON reuses biological interaction patterns as structural building blocks. It combines classical evolutionary operators with neuroevolution-inspired mechanisms, including speciation, and introduces species quarantine to protect newly generated architectures during early maturation. We evaluated TRON against established evolutionary and neuroevolutionary methods on three classification benchmarks (CORA, CITESEER, and PUBMED) and three regression benchmarks (DIABETES, FRIEDMAN, and CALIFORNIA). TRON achieved the highest predictive…