An Improved Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (INSGA-II) applied to the design of DNA codewords

DNA codewords design is critical for many research fields, from DNA computing, to DNA hybridization arrays, to DNA nanotechnology. Results in the literature rely on a wide variety of design criteria adapted to the particular requirements of each application. Since DNA codewords design can be regarded as a multi-objective optimization problem, and nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) has been demonstrated as one of the most efficient algorithms for multi-objective optimization problems, in this paper, we proposed an improved nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (INSGA-II) for the design of DNA codewords. The novelty of our method is that introduced the constraints to the non-dominated sorting process. The performance of our method is compared with other DNA codewords design methods, and the experiment results in silico showed that the INSGA-II has a higher convergence speed and better population diversity than those of other algorithms, and can provide reliable and effective codewords for the controllable DNA computing.