Bioinformatics with Swift: Ep. 5 — Computing GC Content

Let’s get back to work exploring another Rosalind bioinformatics challenge. . . in Swift!

Welcome to another thrilling episode of our Swift-based bioinformatics journey. In this post, we’ll tackle the task of computing the GC content of DNA strings and determine the string with the highest GC content (from Rosalind’s fifth bioinformatics challenge). As a bonus, we’ll explore the FASTA format used to label DNA strings. If you’re ready to unravel the genetic mysteries, let’s get started!

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Understanding the Problem

DNA strings contain genetic information composed of four nucleotides: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C), and Guanine (G). In bioinformatics, understanding the composition of DNA strings is crucial.

The GC content of a DNA string is the percentage of symbols in the string that are either ‘C’ or ‘G’. For example, in the string “AGCTATAG,” the GC content is 37.5%, as 3 out of 8…