On the Far from Most String Problem, One of the Hardest String Selection Problems

This paper describes the far from most string problem, one of the computationally hardest string selection problems that has found its way into numerous practical applications, especially in computational biology and bioinformatics, where one is interested in computing distance/proximity among biological sequences, creating diagnostic probes for bacterial infections and/or in discovering potential drug targets. With special emphasis on the optimization and operational research perspective, this paper studies the intrinsic properties of the problem and overviews the most popular solution techniques, including some recently proposed heuristic and metaheuristic approaches. Future directions are discussed in the last section