4 ms·

I think you're severely underestimating 4^300. The answer to GP's question is that it's not an iterative brute-force. But I'm not a biologist, so I can't go int

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• gus_massa 5y ago
  I think it's more important that it's a branch-and-prune algorithm. Many branches are created, but they are quickly pruned if they are worse or just unlucky. (Someone may be a the "best" human alive, but if a piano falls on the head, s/he ded and pruned.) Branches are retried, so if some branch is an improvement and is cut by bad luck, it may be luckier a few million years later. This does not guarantee that the "best" solution is found, but also avoid looking in the 4^300 combinations. Also, there are shorter genes, some proteins have ~50 amino acids (~150 bases), and some useful short amino acids chains have a length of 20 or even less (~60 bases or less). It's possible to start with a short versions that does something slightly useful, and slowly increase the length an efficiency.
  • jcims 5y ago
    The 'branch-and-prune' aspect of evolution seems to be the primary lifeline out of the combinatorics conundrum.