EVOLUTIONARY AND GENETIC METHODS IN DRUG DESIGN

Many phases of rational drug design involve finding solutions to large combinatorial problems for which an exhaustive search is intractable. A simulation of the evolutionary pressure of natural selection can be incorporated into artificial intelligence algorithms to rapidly find good, if not optimal, solutions to such problems. This review describe s implementations and select applications of genetic algorithms and ev olutionary programming in various aspects of rational drug design. Evo lutionary methods have been developed in the areas of pharmacophore el ucidation, lead discovery and lead optimization, as well as in many ar eas of peripheral importance to rational drug design.