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MPI-I-96-1-031

On the complexity of computing evolutionary trees

Gasieniec, Leszek and Jansson, Jesper and Lingas, Andrzej and Östlin, Anna

November 1996, 14 pages.

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Status: available - back from printing

In this paper we study a few important tree optimization problems with applications to computational biology. These problems ask for trees that are consistent with an as large part of the given data as possible. We show that the maximum homeomorphic agreement subtree problem cannot be approximated within a factor of $N^{\epsilon}$, where $N$ is the input size, for any $0 \leq \epsilon < \frac{1}{18}$ in polynomial time, unless P=NP. On the other hand, we present an $O(N\log N)$-time heuristic for the restriction of this problem to instances with $O(1)$ trees of height $O(1)$, yielding solutions within a constant factor of the optimum. We prove that the maximum inferred consensus tree problem is NP-complete and we provide a simple fast heuristic for it, yielding solutions within one third of the optimum. We also present a more specialized polynomial-time heuristic for the maximum inferred local consensus tree problem.

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URL to this document: https://domino.mpi-inf.mpg.de/internet/reports.nsf/NumberView/1996-1-031

Hide details for BibTeXBibTeX
@TECHREPORT{GasieniecJanssonLingasÖstlin96,
  AUTHOR = {Gasieniec, Leszek and Jansson, Jesper and Lingas, Andrzej and {\"O}stlin, Anna},
  TITLE = {On the complexity of computing evolutionary trees},
  TYPE = {Research Report},
  INSTITUTION = {Max-Planck-Institut f{\"u}r Informatik},
  ADDRESS = {Im Stadtwald, D-66123 Saarbr{\"u}cken, Germany},
  NUMBER = {MPI-I-96-1-031},
  MONTH = {November},
  YEAR = {1996},
  ISSN = {0946-011X},
}