A new approach to the non-unique probe selection problem

Identification of biological agents in a sample is a relevant problem in medicine. A model to this problem consists of selecting optimal oligonucleotide probe sets for use in hybridization experiments in which target viruses or bacteria are to be identified in biological samples. In such an experiment the presence or absence of these targets is determined by observing whether selected probes bind to their corresponding sequences. The problem is to select a probe set that is able to uniquely identify targets while containing a minimal number of probes. In this paper we describe a heuristic algorithm that produced feasible solution sets that for large, real data sets contain significantly fewer probes than those obtained using other methods. A description of the problem, our approach, and the results are presented. We developed a C++ program and a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to run real and simulated instances of the problem.