Biomolecular Structure Prediction Using Immune Inspired Algorithms

Proteins are responsible for almost all functions in a living organism: such as enzymatic catalysis, storage and transport of material, RNA editing, organ development, antibodies and more. The Protein Structure Prediction problem (PSP) is concerned with the prediction of the 3D structure of a protein given its sequence of amino acids. If we know the protein structure we can infer the protein function. One computational approach for predicting the 3D structure of a protein is related to the minimisation of the energy function derived from physico-chemical and statistical considerations. The Chapter proposes the use of hybrid Immune Algorithms to face the PSP as a single objective optimisation problem, the classical approach, and as a multi-objective optimisation problem, the innovative approach. This Chapter presents a link between the world of Artificial Immune Systems and the application to real biological problems.