How should I practice Minimum Genetic Mutation?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Benchling online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Minimum Genetic Mutation associated with Benchling?

FastPrep tags this as a Benchling online assessment coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Minimum Genetic Mutation

Benchling● MediumNEW GRADOA

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Problem statement

A gene is an eight-character string whose characters are chosen from A, C, G, and T.

One mutation changes exactly one character. Every gene reached after a mutation must occur in bank. The starting gene is valid even when it is not in the bank.

Given startGene, endGene, and bank, return the minimum number of mutations needed to reach endGene. Return -1 when no valid sequence exists.

Function

minMutation(startGene: String, endGene: String, bank: String[]) → int

Examples

Example 1

startGene = "AACCGGTT"endGene = "AACCGGTA"bank = ["AACCGGTA"]return = 1

Changing the final character from T to A reaches the bank gene in one mutation.

Example 2

startGene = "AACCGGTT"endGene = "AAACGGTA"bank = ["AACCGGTA","AACCGCTA","AAACGGTA"]return = 2

The sequence AACCGGTT, AACCGGTA, AAACGGTA uses two valid mutations.

Constraints

0 <= bank.length <= 10.
startGene.length == 8.
endGene.length == 8.
Every bank gene has length 8.
Every gene contains only A, C, G, and T.