The purpose of our senior project is to design and implement a genetic algorithm that can be used to find optimal solutions for a variety of real-world problems. This genetic algorithm will function in a manner mimicking the theory of evolution. Our client is Dr. Edmond Abrahamian of Tripos Inc. located in St. Louis, MO. He will be using the final product in the area of bioinformatics, but it should be generic enough for use in other areas as well. Our client has requested that our algorithm be implemented in such a way that it is platform independent, although primarily, he will be using it in the UNIX operating system.