A simple procedure to weight empirical potentials in a fitness function so as to optimize its performance in ab initio protein-folding problem.

In an approach to the protein folding problem by a Genetic Algorithm, the fitness function plays a critical role. Empirical potentials are generally used to build the fitness function, and they must be weighted to obtain a valuable one. The weights are generally found by the comparison with a set of misfolded structures (decoys), but a dependence of the obtained fitness generally arises on the used decoys.