Evolutionary computation in bioinformatics: a review

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the application of evolutionary algorithms in certain bioinformatics tasks. Different tasks such as gene sequence analysis, gene mapping, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) fragment assembly, gene finding, microarray analysis, gene regulatory network analysis, phylogenetic trees, structure prediction and analysis of DNA, ribonucleic acid and protein, and molecular docking with ligand design are, first of all, described along with their basic features. The relevance of using evolutionary algorithms to these problems is then mentioned. These are followed by different approaches, along with their merits, for addressing some of the aforesaid tasks. Finally, some limitations of the current research activity are provided. An extensive bibliography is included.