Potential Problems
Though the game idea sounds very good, it'll take a while to tackle such a project! Not many people have done such ambitious work in AI before (except maybe in Black & White, but Lionhead struggled to make a game out of it).
I wouldn't worry about getting it working in real-time, once it's working, making it efficient is the easy part! The problem with AI is getting it to work at all ;)
As for the concept of the game, I'd start with something simpler than genetic code for people! Try swapping small parts of simple genetic code (for example a creature that can do few very basic tasks). Then see if you can get the performance to improve by such trading, and if you can do it without knowing what each gene does. Therein lies you major challenge.
Anyway, good luck, and let us know of your progress!
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