Use of genetic algorithms to solve biomedical problems.

Many problems in the biomedical sciences can be formulated as searches in some appropriate space. The genetic algorithm offers a domain-independent approach to searching that is often able to provide good answers to questions with difficult search spaces. This paper discusses when to use this genetically inspired approach, how to model problems as searches, how to define appropriate spaces, representations, and fitness functions, and how to implement a program using a genetic algorithm.