Introduction
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To: |
International Research Team |
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From: |
Brian Conte |
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Subject: |
X-Virus |
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Date: |
April 5, 2006 |
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By now, many of you have seen news stories about the recent outbreak of "X-Virus" in southern
India. X-Virus is a virus which uses a new model for attacking human cells. After entering a cell, it systematically bonds with all
free amino acids, depriving the cell of the material it needs for protein construction
and providing itself with the means to grow and multiply. While the number of confirmed
cases right now is small, this is clearly a situation which has the potential to become
quite serious, on a global
scale.
Our team has been asked to help prepare a defense against this new virus. Specifically,
we have been asked to develop an algorithm which can be used by an injected synthetic
protein to combat the virus. When the synthetic protein detects the presence of
the virus in a cell, it will invoke our algorithm to bond with all the free amino
acids in the cell, essentially starving the virus before it can cause permanent
damage.
Our algorithm will work by performing transformations on the protein which allow
it to bond with surrounding amino acids. It will continue these transformations
until our protein has bonded with all of the free amino acids in the cell. At this
point our job is complete; the virus will decay and our protein will then release
all amino acids again.
It is very important that we bond with the surrounding amino acids as quickly as
possible, before the virus has a chance to bond with them. This means that our algorithm
must be able to bond with all amino acids using the fewest number of transformations
(or "moves"), and also have a reasonable execution time ("time"). Our final choice of algorithm will be based on a combination
of required moves and time.
I am asking each of you to develop a candidate algorithm. You will have until May
8 to do so. After May 8th we will benchmark the submitted algorithms and choose
the best six for further trials.
We have set up a simulator and an SDK that all of you can use to develop and test your algorithms.
For more information on those, see
http://www.wildnoodle.com/ic2006r2/Tutorial.aspx.
Thanks for your help on this important project, and good luck with your algorithm!
Brian Conte
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