A DNA Algorithm for Solving Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

Since the great capacity of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) computing to perform parallel relation, it has magnetized attention. Rely on this property, the DNA computing can be used for solving hard problems such as NP-Complete problems. Therefore, this paper proposes a molecular algorithm to solve Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) as an NP-hard problem. In addition, a new representation for graph in DNA format is presented so that a graph is represented with only its vertices strands by defining an identifier in which specifies the existence edge between two vertices. The proposed algorithm generates an initial pool solution and creates whole random search space by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) operation and chooses a feasible solution by valid length and then selects the best solution based on distance between customers. We use both properties, selection by the length of strand that it has done by Gel Electrophoresis, and selection based on Guanine-Cytosine content.