Genetic Algorithms in Protein Structure Prediction

Genetic Algorithms are optimization techniques. In protein structure prediction, tentative structures are variesd and evaluated according to a certain rate of assessment. The rates are optimized in order to achieve a prediction of the real structure. A typical approach is to minimize the conformational energy using an empirical force field. The optimization method is faced with two difficulties. First, the space of possible conformations is very large even for small proteins. Second, the objective function usually is highdimensional and multimodal: this is known as the multiple minima problem. Genetic Algorithms are promising to be less limited by these problems than common optimization methods. They try to exploit the mechanisms by which natural evolution performs its optimization task - to create life that is optimally adapted to its environment.

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