Protein Folding Simulation Using Combinatorial Whale Optimization Algorithm

The Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) is a novel nature-inspired algorithm, being originally dedicated to continuous function optimization. This paper modifies it to address combinatorial, i.e. discrete function optimization; the new algorithm is called Combinatorial Whale Optimization Algorithm (cWOA). cWOA was applied to protein folding problem on the 2D HP Model, which is a well known combinatorial optimization problem. The results are encouraging for further development and expansion of experiments to 3D HP or other models.