基于动态规划的快速序列比对算法

序列比对算法是生物信息学中重要的研究方向之一,而动态规划法是序列比对算法中最有效最基本的方法．由于原有的基本动态规划方法时间和空间复杂度大,不适合实际的生物序列比对,因此本文在分析介绍几种相关动态规划算法的基础上,提出了一种基于动态规划的快速序列比对算法UKK_FA．实验结果表明,该算法有效地降低了时间复杂度,具有一定的实用性。     

生物序列比对算法的研究现状

序列比对是生物信息学研究的一个重要工具,它在序列拼接、蛋白质结构预测、蛋白质结构功能分析、系统进化分析、数据库检索以及引物设计等问题的研究中被广泛使用。本文详细介绍了在生物信息学中常用的一些序列比对算法,比较了这些算法所需的计算复杂度,优缺点,讨论了各自的使用范围,并指出今后序列比对研究的发展方向。     

基于图形硬件加速的生物序列比对算法研究

生物序列比对是生物信息学的基础,是当今功能基因组学研究中最常用、最重要的研究方法之一。本文对各类序列比对算法优缺点进行分析,对图形硬件的优势进行挖掘。在此基础上,将各类序列比对算法中准确性最高的动态规划算法予以实现,并将其映射到图形硬件上,以实现算法加速。通过实例进行性能评测,结果表明该加速算法在保证比对准确性的同时,能较大地提高比对速度。     

基于结构信息的RNA多序列比对

多序列比对是生物信息学中重要的基础研究内容,对各种RNA序列分析方法而言,这也是非常重要的一步。不像DNA和蛋白质,许多功能RNA分子的序列保守性要远差于其结构的保守性,因此,对RNA的分析研究要求其多序列比对不仅要考虑序列信息,而且要充分考虑到其结构信息。本文提出了一种考虑了结构信息的同源RNA多序列比对算法,它先利用热力学方法计算出每条序列的配对概率矩阵,得到结构信息,由此构造各条序列的结构信息矢量,结合传统序列比对方法,提出优化目标函数,采用动态规划算法和渐进比对得到最后的多序列比对。试验证实该方法的有效性。     

参数序列比对算法研究

序列比对是生物信息学中的一项重要任务,通过序列比对可以发现生物序列中的功能、结构和进化的信息。序列比对结果的生物学意义与所选择的匹配、不匹配、插入和删除以及空隙的罚分函数密切相关。现介绍一种参数序列比对方法,该方法把最佳比对作为权值和罚分的函数,可以系统地得到参数的选择对最佳比对结果的影响。然后将其应用于RNA序列比对,分析不同的参数选择对序列比对结果的影响。最后指出参数序列比对算法的应用以及未来的发展方向。     

基于Progressive多序列比对方法的求解多序列比对的启发式算法

在生物信息学研究中,生物序列比对问题占有重要的地位。多序列比对问题是一个NPC问题,由于时间和空间的限制不能够求出精确解。文中简要介绍了Feng和Doolittle提出的多序列比对算法的基本思想,并改进了该算法使之具有更好的比对精度。实验结果表明,新算法对解决一般的progressive多序列比对方法中遇到的局部最优问题有较好的效果。     

双序列比对基础和应用实例

首先介绍序列比对的分子生物学基础,即核酸序列基本单元核苷酸和蛋白质序列基本单元氨基酸。文中以精心设计的图表列出四种核苷酸和二十种氨基酸的名称、性质和分类。第2节简述序列比对基础,包括相似性和同源性基本概念、整体比对和局部比对、点阵图方法、动态规划和启发式算法、计分矩阵和空位罚分,以及常用软件和分析平台。第3节介绍核酸序列比对中常用计分矩阵DNAfull,蛋白质序列比对中常用计分矩阵BLOSUM62和PAM250。第4-8节则以血红蛋白、多肽毒素、植物转录因子、癌胚抗原和唾液酸酶为例,介绍双序列比对的具体应用。通过这些实例,说明如何选择分析平台和比对程序、如何设置计分矩阵和空位罚分,如何分析比对结果及其生物学意义。文末进行简要总结。     

一个新的多序列比对算法

多序列比对是生物信息学中基础而又重要的序列分析方法.本文提出一种新的多序列比对算法,该算法综合了渐进比对方法和迭代策略,采用加权函数以调整序列的有偏分布,用neighbor-joining方法构建指导树以确定渐进比对的顺序.通过对BAlibASE中142组蛋白质序列比对的测试,验证了本算法的有效性.与Multalin算法比较的结果表明,本算法能有效地提高分歧较大序列的比对准确率.     

多序列比对算法的研究进展

多序列比对在阐明一组相关序列的重要生物学模式方面起着十分重要的作用。自从计算机的出现,就有许多研究者致力于多序列比对算法。人类基因组计划和单体型计划使多序列比对研究再次成为研究热点。本文详细归纳了多序列比对的主要算法,总结了国内外近年来多序列比对的研究进展,同时也分析并预测了未来该问题的研究方向。     

MATLAB 7.X生物信息工具箱的应用——序列比对(二)

序列比对是基因序列分析中的一项重要工作.本文以人和鼠的基因为对象,介绍MATLAB 7.X生物信息工具箱中的序列比对方法,内容包括从数据库获取序列信息,查找序列的开放阅读框,将核苷酸序列转换为氨基酸序列,绘制比较两氨基酸序列的散点图,用Needleman-Wunsch算法和Smith-Waterman算法进行比对,以及计算两序列的同一性.     

Constrained sequence alignment

This paper presents a dynamic programming algorithm for aligning two sequeces when the alignment is constrained to lie between two arbitrary boundary lines in the dynamic programming matrix. For affine gap penalties, the algorithm requires onlyO(F) computation time andO(M+N) space, whereF is the area of the feasible region andM andN are the sequence lengths. The result extends to concave gap penalties, with somewhat increased time and space bounds. K.-M. C. and W. M. were supported in part by grant R01 LM05110 from the National Library of Medicine. R. C. H. was supported by PHS grant R01 DK27635.     

Suboptimal sequence alignment in molecular biology. Alignment with error analysis

A molecular sequence alignment algorithm based on dynamic programming has been extended to allow the computation of all pairs of residues that can be part of optimal and suboptimal sequence alignments. The uncertainties inherent in sequence alignment can be displayed using a new form of dot plot. The method allows the qualitative assessment of whether or not two sequences are related, and can reveal what parts of the alignment are better determined than others. It also permits the computation of representative optimal and suboptimal alignments. The relation between alignment reliability and alignment parameters is discussed. Other applications are to cyclical permutations of sequences and the detection of self-similarity. An application to multiple sequence alignment is noted.     

A memory-efficient algorithm for multiple sequence alignment with constraints

MOTIVATION: Recently, the concept of the constrained sequence alignment was proposed to incorporate the knowledge of biologists about structures/functionalities/consensuses of their datasets into sequence alignment such that the user-specified residues/nucleotides are aligned together in the computed alignment. The currently developed programs use the so-called progressive approach to efficiently obtain a constrained alignment of several sequences. However, the kernels of these programs, the dynamic programming algorithms for computing an optimal constrained alignment between two sequences, run in (gamman2) memory, where gamma is the number of the constraints and n is the maximum of the lengths of sequences. As a result, such a high memory requirement limits the overall programs to align short sequences only. RESULTS: We adopt the divide-and-conquer approach to design a memory-efficient algorithm for computing an optimal constrained alignment between two sequences, which greatly reduces the memory requirement of the dynamic programming approaches at the expense of a small constant factor in CPU time. This new algorithm consumes only O(alphan) space, where alpha is the sum of the lengths of constraints and usually alpha < n in practical applications. Based on this algorithm, we have developed a memory-efficient tool for multiple sequence alignment with constraints. AVAILABILITY: http://genome.life.nctu.edu.tw/MUSICME.     

Super pairwise alignment (SPA): an efficient approach to global alignment for homologous sequences.

Sequence analysis is the basis of bioinformatics, while sequence alignment is a fundamental task for sequence analysis. The widely used alignment algorithm, Dynamic Programming, though generating optimal alignment, takes too much time due to its high computation complexity O(N(2)). In order to reduce computation complexity without sacrificing too much accuracy, we have developed a new approach to align two homologous sequences. The new approach presented here, adopting our novel algorithm which combines the methods of probabilistic and combinatorial analysis, reduces the computation complexity to as low as O(N). The computation speed by our program is at least 15 times faster than traditional pairwise alignment algorithms without a loss of much accuracy. We hence named the algorithm Super Pairwise Alignment (SPA). The pairwise alignment execution program based on SPA and the detailed results of the aligned sequences discussed in this article are available upon request.     

Faster algorithms for optimal multiple sequence alignment based on pairwise comparisons

Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is one of the most fundamental problems in computational molecular biology. The running time of the best known scheme for finding an optimal alignment, based on dynamic programming, increases exponentially with the number of input sequences. Hence, many heuristics were suggested for the problem. We consider a version of the MSA problem where the goal is to find an optimal alignment in which matches are restricted to positions in predefined matching segments. We present several techniques for making the dynamic programming algorithm more efficient, while still finding an optimal solution under these restrictions. We prove that it suffices to find an optimal alignment of the predefined sequence segments, rather than single letters, thereby reducing the input size and thus improving the running time. We also identify "shortcuts" that expedite the dynamic programming scheme. Empirical study shows that, taken together, these observations lead to an improved running time over the basic dynamic programming algorithm by 4 to 12 orders of magnitude, while still obtaining an optimal solution. Under the additional assumption that matches between segments are transitive, we further improve the running time for finding the optimal solution by restricting the search space of the dynamic programming algorithm     

A comparison of four pair-wise sequence alignment methods

Protein sequence alignment has become an essential task in modern molecular biology research. A number of alignment techniques have been documented in literature and their corresponding tools are made available as freeware and commercial software. The choice and use of these tools for sequence alignment through the complete interpretation of alignment results is often considered non-trivial by end-users with limited skill in Bioinformatics algorithm development. Here, we discuss the comparison of sequence alignment techniques based on dynamic programming (N-W, S-W) and heuristics (LFASTA, BL2SEQ) for four sets of sequence data towards an educational purpose. The analysis suggests that heuristics based methods are faster than dynamic programming methods in alignment speed.     

A new approach to sequence comparison: normalized sequence alignment

The Smith-Waterman algorithm for local sequence alignment is one of the most important techniques in computational molecular biology. This ingenious dynamic programming approach was designed to reveal the highly conserved fragments by discarding poorly conserved initial and terminal segments. However, the existing notion of local similarity has a serious flaw: it does not discard poorly conserved intermediate segments. The Smith-Waterman algorithm finds the local alignment with maximal score but it is unable to find local alignment with maximum degree of similarity (e.g. maximal percent of matches). Moreover, there is still no efficient algorithm that answers the following natural question: do two sequences share a (sufficiently long) fragment with more than 70% of similarity? As a result, the local alignment sometimes produces a mosaic of well-conserved fragments artificially connected by poorly-conserved or even unrelated fragments. This may lead to problems in comparison of long genomic sequences and comparative gene prediction as recently pointed out by Zhang et al. (Bioinformatics, 15, 1012-1019, 1999). In this paper we propose a new sequence comparison algorithm (normalized local alignment ) that reports the regions with maximum degree of similarity. The algorithm is based on fractional programming and its running time is O(n2log n). In practice, normalized local alignment is only 3-5 times slower than the standard Smith-Waterman algorithm.     

Multiple sequence alignment using partial order graphs

MOTIVATION: Progressive Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) methods depend on reducing an MSA to a linear profile for each alignment step. However, this leads to loss of information needed for accurate alignment, and gap scoring artifacts. RESULTS: We present a graph representation of an MSA that can itself be aligned directly by pairwise dynamic programming, eliminating the need to reduce the MSA to a profile. This enables our algorithm (Partial Order Alignment (POA)) to guarantee that the optimal alignment of each new sequence versus each sequence in the MSA will be considered. Moreover, this algorithm introduces a new edit operator, homologous recombination, important for multidomain sequences. The algorithm has improved speed (linear time complexity) over existing MSA algorithms, enabling construction of massive and complex alignments (e.g. an alignment of 5000 sequences in 4 h on a Pentium II). We demonstrate the utility of this algorithm on a family of multidomain SH2 proteins, and on EST assemblies containing alternative splicing and polymorphism. AVAILABILITY: The partial order alignment program POA is available at http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/poa.     

An iterative method for faster sum-of-pairs multiple sequence alignment

MOTIVATION: Multiple sequence alignment is an important tool in computational biology. In order to solve the task of computing multiple alignments in affordable time, the most commonly used multiple alignment methods have to use heuristics. Nevertheless, the computation of optimal multiple alignments is important in its own right, and it provides a means of evaluating heuristic approaches or serves as a subprocedure of heuristic alignment methods. RESULTS: We present an algorithm that uses the divide-and-conquer alignment approach together with recent results on search space reduction to speed up the computation of multiple sequence alignments. The method is adaptive in that depending on the time one wants to spend on the alignment, a better, up to optimal alignment can be obtained. To speed up the computation in the optimal alignment step, we apply the alpha(*) algorithm which leads to a procedure provably more efficient than previous exact algorithms. We also describe our implementation of the algorithm and present results showing the effectiveness and limitations of the procedure.     

Multiple sequence alignment by parallel simulated annealing

We have developed simulated annealing algorithms to solve theproblem of multiple sequence alignment. The algorithm wns shownto give the optimal solution as confirmed by the rigorous dynamicprogramming algorithm for three-sequence alignment. To overcomelong execution times for simulated annealing, we utilized aparallel computer. A sequential algorithm, a simple parallelalgorithm and the temperature parallel algorithm were testedon a problem. The results were compared with the result obtainedby a conventional tree-based algorithm where alignments weremerged by two-' dynamic programming. Every annealing algorithmproduced a better energy value than the conventional algorithm.The best energy value, which probably represents the optimalsolution, wns reached within a reasonable time by both of theparallel annealing algorithms. We consider the temperature parallelalgorithm of simulated annealing to be the most suitable forfinding the optimal multiple sequence alignment because thealgorithm does not require any scheduling for optimization.The algorithm is also usefiui for refining multiple alignmentsobtained by other hewistic methods.