Solving the Genome Aliquoting Problem
Author Information
Author(s): Warren Robert, Sankoff David
Primary Institution: University of Ottawa
Hypothesis
Can we reconstruct the identity of an original genome from its polyploid descendants using a heuristic algorithm?
Conclusion
The heuristic performs well, consistently giving a non-trivial result, but the existence of an exact solution remains uncertain.
Supporting Evidence
- The heuristic was tested on simulated data and performed close to optimal in small cases.
- On larger genomes, the heuristic performed significantly better than trivial cases.
- 21% of the time, the heuristic returned an improperly aliquoted genome.
Takeaway
This study tries to figure out how to find the original version of a genome that has many copies of itself. They created a smart way to do it and showed it works pretty well.
Methodology
The authors developed a heuristic algorithm to solve the genome aliquoting problem and tested it on simulated and real data.
Limitations
The algorithm sometimes produces improperly aliquoted genomes and can yield results that are better than optimal.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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