Medium
Quiz
#433 Minimum Genetic Mutation
APPROACH
A gene sequence is exactly 8 characters built from {'A', 'C', 'G', 'T'}. A single mutation changes exactly one character. Every intermediate gene produced during the transformation must be present in the bank; the starting gene is always valid on its own.
Given startGene, endGene, and bank, return the minimum mutation count to transform startGene into endGene, or -1 if the transformation is impossible.
Example 1:
Input: startGene = "AACCGGTT", endGene = "AACCGGTA", bank = ["AACCGGTA"]
Output: 1
Example 2:
Input: startGene = "AACCGGTT", endGene = "AAACGGTA", bank = ["AACCGGTA","AACCGCTA","AAACGGTA"]
Output: 2
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What is the optimal approach for this problem?