Crossover operators for multiobjective k-subset selection

Genetic algorithms are often applied to combinatorial optimization problems, the most popular one probably being the traveling salesperson problem. In contrast to permutations used for TSP, the selection of a subset from a larger set has so far gained surprisingly little interest. One intriguing example of this type of problems occurs in diversity selection for virtual high throughput screening, where k molecules need to be selected from a set of n while optimizing certain constraints. In this paper we present a novel representation for k-subsets and several genetic operators for it.