A Knowledge-Based Initial Population Generation in Memetic Algorithm for Protein Structure Prediction

Abstract

Predicting the minimum energy protein structure from its amino acid sequence, even under the rather simplified HP lattice model, continues to be an important and challenging problem in computational biology. In this paper, we propose a novel initial population generation strategy for evolutionary algorithm incorporating domain knowledge based on the concept of maximum hydrophobic core formation for Protein structure prediction (PSP) problem. The proposed technique helps the optimization process to commence with diverse seeds and thereby aids in converging to the global solution quickly. The experimental results, conducted on PSP problem using HP benchmark sequences for 2D square and 3D cubic lattice model, demonstrate that the proposed evolutionary algorithm with new core-based population initialization technique is very effective in improving the optimization process in terms of convergence as well as in achieving the optimal energy.