The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. Share The selection of appropriate descriptors is an important step in the successful formulation of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs). This paper compares a number of feature selection routines and mapping methods that are in current use. They include forward stepping regression (FSR), genetic function approximation (GFA), generalized simulated annealing (GSA), and genetic neural network (GNN). On the basis of a data set of steroids of known in vitro binding affinity to the progsterone receptor, a number of QSAR models are constructed. A comparison of the predictive qualities for both training and test compounds demonstrates that the GNN protocol achieves the best results among the 2D QSAR that are considered. Analysis of the choice of descriptors by the GNN method shows that the results are consistent with established SARs on this series of compounds. So SS, et al. J Med Chem. 1996 Dec 20;39(26):5246-56. doi: 10.1021/jm960536o. J Med Chem. 1996. PMID: 8978853 So SS, et al. J Med Chem. 1997 Dec 19;40(26):4347-59. doi: 10.1021/jm970487v. J Med Chem. 1997. PMID: 9435904 So SS, et al. J Med Chem. 1996 Mar 29;39(7):1521-30. doi: 10.1021/jm9507035. J Med Chem. 1996. PMID: 8691483 Neelima MS, et al. Prog Drug Res. 1986;30:151-88. doi: 10.1007/978-3-0348-9311-4_5. Prog Drug Res. 1986. PMID: 3544043 Review. No abstract available. Ghosh P, et al. Curr Med Chem. 2009;16(30):4032-48. doi: 10.2174/092986709789352303. Curr Med Chem. 2009. PMID: 19747124 Review. Schaduangrat N, et al. Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 30;12(1):16435. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-20143-5. Sci Rep. 2022. PMID: 36180453 Free PMC article. Debeljak Z, et al. J Comput Aided Mol Des. 2005 Dec;19(12):835-55. doi: 10.1007/s10822-005-9022-2. Epub 2006 Apr 11. J Comput Aided Mol Des. 2005. PMID: 16607572