23 Search Results for "Bernardini, Giulia"


Document
Optimal Structure for Prefix-Substring Queries

Authors: Paweł Gawrychowski, Florin Manea, and Jonas Richardsen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)


Abstract
The prefix-substring matching problem [Gu, Farach, and Beigel, SODA 1994] consists in preprocessing a string s of length n for the following queries: given a triple (i, j, k) ∈ {0, … , |s|}³ with 1 ≤ j ≤ k, representing a prefix s[1:i] and a substring s[j:k] of s, find the longest prefix of s that is a suffix of s[1:i]s[j:k]. This is an useful primitive in e.g. dynamic text indexing, compressed pattern matching, and pattern matching on block graphs. The border tree uses some basic periodicity properties to answer such queries in 𝒪(log n) time after 𝒪(n) time preprocessing of s. We design a linear-space structure that answers such queries in constant time after 𝒪(n) time preprocessing of s over a polynomial alphabet, which is worst-case optimal.

Cite as

Paweł Gawrychowski, Florin Manea, and Jonas Richardsen. Optimal Structure for Prefix-Substring Queries. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 7:1-7:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{gawrychowski_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.7,
  author =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Manea, Florin and Richardsen, Jonas},
  title =	{{Optimal Structure for Prefix-Substring Queries}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259333},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Border Tree, Prefix-Substring Query, Data Structures}
}
Document
Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings

Authors: Dominik Köppl and Jannik Olbrich

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)


Abstract
Generalizations of plain strings have been proposed as a compact way to represent a collection of nearly identical sequences or to express uncertainty at specific text positions by enumerating all possibilities. While a plain string stores a character at each of its positions, generalizations consider a set of characters (indeterminate strings), a set of strings of equal length (generalized degenerate strings, or shortly GD strings), or a set of strings of arbitrary lengths (elastic-degenerate strings, or shortly ED strings). These generalizations are of importance to compactly represent such type of data, and find applications in bioinformatics for representing and maintaining a set of genetic sequences of the same taxonomy or a multiple sequence alignment. To be of use, attention has been drawn to answering various query types such as pattern matching or measuring similarity of ED strings by generalizing techniques known to plain strings. However, for some types of queries, it has been shown that a generalization of a polynomial-time solvable query on classic strings becomes NP-hard on ED strings, e.g. [Russo et al., 2022]. In that light, we wonder about other types of queries that are of particular interest to bioinformatics: unique substrings, absent words, anti-powers, longest previous factors, and Lempel-Ziv-like compression schemes. While we obtain a polynomial time algorithm for a variation of longest previous factors, we show that all other problems are NP-hard to compute, some of them even under the restriction that the input can be modeled as an indeterminate or GD string.

Cite as

Dominik Köppl and Jannik Olbrich. Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 14:1-14:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{koppl_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14,
  author =	{K\"{o}ppl, Dominik and Olbrich, Jannik},
  title =	{{Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259409},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Elastic-degenerate strings, NP-hardness, longest common factor, minimal unique substring, minimal absent word, anti-power, longest previous factor}
}
Document
A k-mer-Based Estimator of the Substitution Rate Between Repetitive Sequences

Authors: Haonan Wu, Antonio Blanca, and Paul Medvedev

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 344, 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)


Abstract
K-mer-based analysis of genomic data is ubiquitous, but the presence of repetitive k-mers continues to pose problems for the accuracy of many methods. For example, the Mash tool (Ondov et al. 2016) can accurately estimate the substitution rate between two low-repetitive sequences from their k-mer sketches; however, it is inaccurate on repetitive sequences such as the centromere of a human chromosome. Follow-up work by Blanca et al. (2021) has attempted to model how mutations affect k-mer sets based on strong assumptions that the sequence is non-repetitive and that mutations do not create spurious k-mer matches. However, the theoretical foundations for extending an estimator like Mash to work in the presence of repeat sequences have been lacking. In this work, we relax the non-repetitive assumption and propose a novel estimator for the mutation rate. We derive theoretical bounds on our estimator’s bias. Our experiments show that it remains accurate for repetitive genomic sequences, such as the alpha satellite higher order repeats in centromeres. We demonstrate our estimator’s robustness across diverse datasets and various ranges of the substitution rate and k-mer size. Finally, we show how sketching can be used to avoid dealing with large k-mer sets while retaining accuracy. Our software is available at https://github.com/medvedevgroup/Repeat-Aware_Substitution_Rate_Estimator.

Cite as

Haonan Wu, Antonio Blanca, and Paul Medvedev. A k-mer-Based Estimator of the Substitution Rate Between Repetitive Sequences. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 20:1-20:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{wu_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.20,
  author =	{Wu, Haonan and Blanca, Antonio and Medvedev, Paul},
  title =	{{A k-mer-Based Estimator of the Substitution Rate Between Repetitive Sequences}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-386-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{344},
  editor =	{Brejov\'{a}, Bro\v{n}a and Patro, Rob},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239465},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: k-mers, sketching, mutation rates}
}
Document
Research
On the Construction of Elastic Degenerate Strings

Authors: Nicola Rizzo, Veli Mäkinen, and Nadia Pisanti

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 132, From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday (2025)


Abstract
An elastic degenerate string (EDS) is a sequence of sets of strings. In the context of bioinformatics, EDSes can be used to represent the variations observed in a population from its consensus genome. Pattern matching and comparison problems on EDSes have been widely studied in the literature, but their construction has been largely omitted. We fill this gap by showing how algorithms originally developed for related problems of founder reconstruction can be adapted to minimize the total cardinality of the EDS sets and total length of the EDS strings in linear time, given suitable multiple alignments representing the input data.

Cite as

Nicola Rizzo, Veli Mäkinen, and Nadia Pisanti. On the Construction of Elastic Degenerate Strings. In From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 132, pp. 2:1-2:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{rizzo_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.2,
  author =	{Rizzo, Nicola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli and Pisanti, Nadia},
  title =	{{On the Construction of Elastic Degenerate Strings}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{2:1--2:13},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238014},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: multiple sequence alignment, pattern matching, data structures, segmentation algorithms, founder reconstruction, dynamic programming, semi-dynamic range minimum queries, positional Burrows-Wheeler transform}
}
Document
Research
Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences

Authors: Marie-Pierre Béal and Maxime Crochemore

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 132, From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday (2025)


Abstract
We design alignment-free techniques for comparing a set of sequences or just a word, called a target, against another set of words, called a reference. This is done with the detection of factor patterns that distinguish the target from the reference. A target-specific factor of a target T against a reference R is then a factor w of a word in T that is not a factor of a word in R but whose proper factors of w are factors of a word in R. The strategy is based on the notion of minimal absent/forbidden words. We first address the computation of the set of target-specific factors of a target T against a reference R, where T and R are finite sets of sequences. The result is the construction of an automaton accepting the set of all considered target-specific factors. The construction algorithm runs in linear time according to the size of T ∪ R. The second result is the design of an algorithm to compute all the occurrences in a single sequence T of its target-specific factors against a reference R. The algorithm runs in real-time on the target sequence, independently of the number of occurrences of target-specific factors.

Cite as

Marie-Pierre Béal and Maxime Crochemore. Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences. In From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 132, pp. 14:1-14:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{beal_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.14,
  author =	{B\'{e}al, Marie-Pierre and Crochemore, Maxime},
  title =	{{Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{14:1--14:12},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238130},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Specific pattern, Minimal absent word, Minimal forbidden word, Directed Acyclic Word Graph (DAWG), Suffix automaton}
}
Document
Research
On String and Graph Sanitization

Authors: Giulia Bernardini, Huiping Chen, Grigorios Loukides, and Solon P. Pissis

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 132, From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday (2025)


Abstract
Data sanitization is a process that conceals sensitive patterns from a given dataset. A secondary goal is to not severely harm the utility of the underlying data along this process. We survey some recent advancements on two related data sanitization topics: string and graph sanitization. In particular, we highlight the important contributions of our friend Prof. Roberto Grossi along this journey.

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Giulia Bernardini, Huiping Chen, Grigorios Loukides, and Solon P. Pissis. On String and Graph Sanitization. In From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 132, pp. 9:1-9:10, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{bernardini_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.9,
  author =	{Bernardini, Giulia and Chen, Huiping and Loukides, Grigorios and Pissis, Solon P.},
  title =	{{On String and Graph Sanitization}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{9:1--9:10},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238086},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: data privacy, data sanitization, string algorithms, graph algorithms}
}
Document
Research
Designing Output Sensitive Algorithms for Subgraph Enumeration

Authors: Alessio Conte, Kazuhiro Kurita, Andrea Marino, Giulia Punzi, Takeaki Uno, and Kunihiro Wasa

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 132, From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday (2025)


Abstract
The enumeration of all subgraphs respecting some structural property is a fundamental task in theoretical computer science, with practical applications in many branches of data mining and network analysis. It is often of interest to only consider solutions (subgraphs) that are maximal under inclusion, and to achieve output-sensitive complexity, i.e., bounding the running time with respect to the number of subgraphs produced. In this paper, we provide a survey of techniques for designing output-sensitive algorithms for subgraph enumeration, including partition-based approaches such as flashlight search, solution-graph traversal methods such as reverse search, and cost amortization strategies such as push-out amortization. We also briefly discuss classes of efficiency, hardness of enumeration, and variants such as approximate enumeration. The paper is meant as an accessible handbook for learning the basics of the field and as a practical reference for selecting state-of-the-art subgraph enumeration strategies fitting to one’s needs.

Cite as

Alessio Conte, Kazuhiro Kurita, Andrea Marino, Giulia Punzi, Takeaki Uno, and Kunihiro Wasa. Designing Output Sensitive Algorithms for Subgraph Enumeration. In From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 132, pp. 19:1-19:40, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{conte_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.19,
  author =	{Conte, Alessio and Kurita, Kazuhiro and Marino, Andrea and Punzi, Giulia and Uno, Takeaki and Wasa, Kunihiro},
  title =	{{Designing Output Sensitive Algorithms for Subgraph Enumeration}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{19:1--19:40},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.19},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238180},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.19},
  annote =	{Keywords: Graph algorithms, Graph enumeration, Output sensitive enumeration}
}
Document
BWT for String Collections

Authors: Davide Cenzato, Zsuzsanna Lipták, Nadia Pisanti, Giovanna Rosone, and Marinella Sciortino

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 131, The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday (2025)


Abstract
We survey the different methods used for extending the BWT to collections of strings, following largely [Cenzato and Lipták, CPM 2022, Bioinformatics 2024]. We analyze the specific aspects and combinatorial properties of the resulting BWT variants and give a categorization of publicly available tools for computing the BWT of string collections. We show how the specific method used impacts on the resulting transform, including the number of runs, and on the dynamicity of the transform with respect to adding or removing strings from the collection. We then focus on the number of runs of these BWT variants and present the optimal BWT introduced in [Cenzato et al., DCC 2023], which implements an algorithm originally proposed by [Bentley et al., ESA 2020] to minimize the number of BWT-runs. We also discuss several recent heuristics and study their impact on the compression of biological sequences. We conclude with an overview of the applications and the impact of the BWT of string collections in bioinformatics.

Cite as

Davide Cenzato, Zsuzsanna Lipták, Nadia Pisanti, Giovanna Rosone, and Marinella Sciortino. BWT for String Collections. In The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 131, pp. 3:1-3:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{cenzato_et_al:OASIcs.Manzini.3,
  author =	{Cenzato, Davide and Lipt\'{a}k, Zsuzsanna and Pisanti, Nadia and Rosone, Giovanna and Sciortino, Marinella},
  title =	{{BWT for String Collections}},
  booktitle =	{The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{3:1--3:29},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-390-4},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{131},
  editor =	{Ferragina, Paolo and Gagie, Travis and Navarro, Gonzalo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239113},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler transform, Extended Burrows-Wheeler transform, compressed text indexes, text compression, string collections, bioinformatics}
}
Document
Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part A

Authors: Solon P. Pissis, Jakub Radoszewski, and Wiktor Zuba

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)


Abstract
An elastic-degenerate (ED) string 𝐓 is a sequence 𝐓 = 𝐓[1] ⋯ 𝐓[n] of n finite sets of strings. The cardinality m of 𝐓 is the total number of strings in 𝐓[i], for all i ∈ [1..n]. The size N of 𝐓 is the total length of all m strings of 𝐓. ED strings have been introduced to represent a set of closely-related DNA sequences. Let P = P[1..p] be a pattern of length p and k > 0 be an integer. We consider the problem of k-Approximate ED String Matching (EDSM): searching k-approximate occurrences of P in the language of 𝐓. We call k-Approximate EDSM under the Hamming distance, k-Mismatch EDSM; and we call k-Approximate EDSM under edit distance, k-Edit EDSM. Bernardini et al. (Theoretical Computer Science, 2020) showed a simple 𝒪(k m p + kN)-time algorithm for k-Mismatch EDSM and an 𝒪(k² m p + kN)-time algorithm for k-Edit EDSM. We improve the dependency on k in both results, obtaining an Õ(k^{2/3}mp+√kN)-time algorithm for k-Mismatch EDSM and an Õ(kmp+ kN)-time algorithm for k-Edit EDSM. Bernardini et al. (Theory of Computing Systems, 2024) presented several algorithms for 1-Approximate EDSM working in Õ(np²+N) time. They have also left the possibility to generalize these solutions for k > 1 as an open problem. We improve the runtime of their solution for 1-Mismatch and 1-Edit EDSM from Õ(np²+N) to 𝒪(np²+N). We further show algorithms for k-Approximate EDSM for the Hamming and edit distances working in Õ(np² + N) time, for any constant k > 0. Finally, we show how our techniques can be applied to improve upon the complexity of the k-Approximate ED String Intersection and k-Approximate Doubly EDSM problems that were introduced very recently by Gabory et al. (Information and Computation, 2025).

Cite as

Solon P. Pissis, Jakub Radoszewski, and Wiktor Zuba. Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part A. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 28:1-28:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{pissis_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.28,
  author =	{Pissis, Solon P. and Radoszewski, Jakub and Zuba, Wiktor},
  title =	{{Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part A}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{28:1--28:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.28},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231227},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.28},
  annote =	{Keywords: ED string, approximate string matching, Hamming distance, edit distance}
}
Document
Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part B

Authors: Paweł Gawrychowski, Adam Górkiewicz, Pola Marciniak, Solon P. Pissis, and Karol Pokorski

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)


Abstract
We revisit the complexity of approximate pattern matching in an elastic-degenerate string. Such a string is a sequence of n finite sets of strings of total length N, and compactly describes a collection of strings obtained by first choosing exactly one string in every set, and then concatenating them together. This is motivated by the need of storing a collection of highly similar DNA sequences. The basic algorithmic question on elastic-degenerate strings is pattern matching: given such an elastic-degenerate string and a standard pattern of length m, check if the pattern occurs in one of the strings in the described collection. Bernardini et al. [SICOMP 2022] showed how to leverage fast matrix multiplication to obtain an Õ(nm^{ω-1})+𝒪(N)-time complexity for this problem, where ω is the matrix multiplication exponent. However, from the point of view of possible applications, it is more desirable to work with approximate pattern matching, where we seek approximate occurrences of the pattern. This generalization has been considered in a few papers already, but the best result so far for occurrences with k mismatches, where k is a constant, is the Õ(nm²+N)-time algorithm presented in Part A [CPM 2025]. This brings the question whether increasing the dependency on m from m^{ω-1} to quadratic is necessary when moving from k = 0 to larger (but still constant) k. We design an Õ(nm^{1.5}+N)-time algorithm for pattern matching with k mismatches in an elastic-degenerate string, for any constant k. To obtain this time bound, we leverage the structural characterization of occurrences with k mismatches of Charalampopoulos, Kociumaka, and Wellnitz [FOCS 2020] together with fast Fourier transform. We need to work with multiple patterns at the same time, instead of a single pattern, which requires refining the original characterization. This might be of independent interest.

Cite as

Paweł Gawrychowski, Adam Górkiewicz, Pola Marciniak, Solon P. Pissis, and Karol Pokorski. Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part B. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 29:1-29:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{gawrychowski_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.29,
  author =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and G\'{o}rkiewicz, Adam and Marciniak, Pola and Pissis, Solon P. and Pokorski, Karol},
  title =	{{Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part B}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231236},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: ED string, approximate pattern matching, Hamming distance, k mismatches}
}
Document
Shortest Undirected Paths in de Bruijn Graphs

Authors: Wiktor Zuba, Oded Lachish, and Solon P. Pissis

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)


Abstract
Computing shortest directed paths in de Bruijn graphs is well studied and well understood. This is not the case for computing undirected paths, which is much more challenging algorithmically. In this paper, we present a general framework for computing shortest undirected paths in arbitrary de Bruijn graphs, that is, arbitrary subgraphs of the complete de Bruijn graph. We then present an application of our techniques for making any arbitrary order-k de Bruijn graph G(V,E) weakly connected by adding a set of edges of minimum total cost. This improves the running time of the recent (2-2/d)-approximation algorithm by Bernardini et al. [CPM 2024] from 𝒪(k|V|²) to 𝒪(k|V|log d) time, where d is the number of weakly connected components of graph G.

Cite as

Wiktor Zuba, Oded Lachish, and Solon P. Pissis. Shortest Undirected Paths in de Bruijn Graphs. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 12:1-12:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{zuba_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.12,
  author =	{Zuba, Wiktor and Lachish, Oded and Pissis, Solon P.},
  title =	{{Shortest Undirected Paths in de Bruijn Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231060},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: string algorithm, graph algorithm, de Bruijn graph, Eulerian graph}
}
Document
A Unifying Taxonomy of Pattern Matching in Degenerate Strings and Founder Graphs

Authors: Rocco Ascone, Giulia Bernardini, Alessio Conte, Massimo Equi, Esteban Gabory, Roberto Grossi, and Nadia Pisanti

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 312, 24th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2024)


Abstract
Elastic Degenerate (ED) strings and Elastic Founder (EF) graphs are two versions of acyclic components of pangenomes. Both ED strings and EF graphs (which we collectively name variable strings) extend the well-known notion of indeterminate string. Recent work has extensively investigated algorithmic tasks over these structures, and over several other variable strings notions that they generalise. Among such tasks, the basic operation of matching a pattern into a text, which can serve as a toolkit for many pangenomic data analyses using these data structures, deserves special attention. In this paper we: (1) highlight a clear taxonomy within both ED strings and EF graphs ranging through variable strings of all types, from the linear string up to the most general one; (2) investigate the problem PvarT(X,Y) of matching a solid or variable pattern of type X into a variable text of type Y; (3) using as a reference the quadratic conditional lower bounds that are known for PvarT(solid,ED) and PvarT(solid,EF), for all possible types of variable strings X and Y we either prove the quadratic conditional lower bound for PvarT(X,Y), or provide non-trivial, often sub-quadratic, upper bounds, also exploiting the above-mentioned taxonomy.

Cite as

Rocco Ascone, Giulia Bernardini, Alessio Conte, Massimo Equi, Esteban Gabory, Roberto Grossi, and Nadia Pisanti. A Unifying Taxonomy of Pattern Matching in Degenerate Strings and Founder Graphs. In 24th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 312, pp. 14:1-14:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{ascone_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2024.14,
  author =	{Ascone, Rocco and Bernardini, Giulia and Conte, Alessio and Equi, Massimo and Gabory, Esteban and Grossi, Roberto and Pisanti, Nadia},
  title =	{{A Unifying Taxonomy of Pattern Matching in Degenerate Strings and Founder Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{24th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2024)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-340-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{312},
  editor =	{Pissis, Solon P. and Sung, Wing-Kin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2024.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-206586},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2024.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pangenomics, pattern matching, degenerate string, founder graph, fine-grained complexity}
}
Document
Connecting de Bruijn Graphs

Authors: Giulia Bernardini, Huiping Chen, Inge Li Gørtz, Christoffer Krogh, Grigorios Loukides, Solon P. Pissis, Leen Stougie, and Michelle Sweering

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 296, 35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024)


Abstract
We study the problem of making a de Bruijn graph (dBG), constructed from a collection of strings, weakly connected while minimizing the total cost of edge additions. The input graph is a dBG that can be made weakly connected by adding edges (along with extra nodes if needed) from the underlying complete dBG. The problem arises from genome reconstruction, where the dBG is constructed from a set of sequences generated from a genome sample by a sequencing experiment. Due to sequencing errors, the dBG is never Eulerian in practice and is often not even weakly connected. We show the following results for a dBG G(V,E) of order k consisting of d weakly connected components: 1) Making G weakly connected by adding a set of edges of minimal total cost is NP-hard. 2) No PTAS exists for making G weakly connected by adding a set of edges of minimal total cost (unless the unique games conjecture fails). We complement this result by showing that there does exist a polynomial-time (2-2/d)-approximation algorithm for the problem. 3) We consider a restricted version of the above problem, where we are asked to make G weakly connected by only adding directed paths between pairs of components. We show that making G weakly connected by adding d-1 such paths of minimal total cost can be done in 𝒪(k|V|α(|V|)+|E|) time, where α(⋅) is the inverse Ackermann function. This improves on the 𝒪(k|V|log(|V|)+|E|)-time algorithm proposed by Bernardini et al. [CPM 2022] for the same restricted problem. 4) An ILP formulation of polynomial size for making G Eulerian with minimal total cost.

Cite as

Giulia Bernardini, Huiping Chen, Inge Li Gørtz, Christoffer Krogh, Grigorios Loukides, Solon P. Pissis, Leen Stougie, and Michelle Sweering. Connecting de Bruijn Graphs. In 35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 296, pp. 6:1-6:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{bernardini_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2024.6,
  author =	{Bernardini, Giulia and Chen, Huiping and G{\o}rtz, Inge Li and Krogh, Christoffer and Loukides, Grigorios and Pissis, Solon P. and Stougie, Leen and Sweering, Michelle},
  title =	{{Connecting de Bruijn Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024)},
  pages =	{6:1--6:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-326-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{296},
  editor =	{Inenaga, Shunsuke and Puglisi, Simon J.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2024.6},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-201168},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2024.6},
  annote =	{Keywords: string algorithm, graph algorithm, de Bruijn graph, Eulerian graph}
}
Document
Substring Complexity in Sublinear Space

Authors: Giulia Bernardini, Gabriele Fici, Paweł Gawrychowski, and Solon P. Pissis

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 283, 34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023)


Abstract
Shannon’s entropy is a definitive lower bound for statistical compression. Unfortunately, no such clear measure exists for the compressibility of repetitive strings. Thus, ad hoc measures are employed to estimate the repetitiveness of strings, e.g., the size z of the Lempel–Ziv parse or the number r of equal-letter runs of the Burrows-Wheeler transform. A more recent one is the size γ of a smallest string attractor. Let T be a string of length n. A string attractor of T is a set of positions of T capturing the occurrences of all the substrings of T. Unfortunately, Kempa and Prezza [STOC 2018] showed that computing γ is NP-hard. Kociumaka et al. [LATIN 2020] considered a new measure of compressibility that is based on the function S_T(k) counting the number of distinct substrings of length k of T, also known as the substring complexity of T. This new measure is defined as δ = sup{S_T(k)/k, k ≥ 1} and lower bounds all the relevant ad hoc measures previously considered. In particular, δ ≤ γ always holds and δ can be computed in 𝒪(n) time using Θ(n) working space. Kociumaka et al. showed that one can construct an 𝒪(δ log n/(δ))-sized representation of T supporting efficient direct access and efficient pattern matching queries on T. Given that for highly compressible strings, δ is significantly smaller than n, it is natural to pose the following question: Can we compute δ efficiently using sublinear working space? It is straightforward to show that in the comparison model, any algorithm computing δ using 𝒪(b) space requires Ω(n^{2-o(1)}/b) time through a reduction from the element distinctness problem [Yao, SIAM J. Comput. 1994]. We thus wanted to investigate whether we can indeed match this lower bound. We address this algorithmic challenge by showing the following bounds to compute δ: - 𝒪((n³log b)/b²) time using 𝒪(b) space, for any b ∈ [1,n], in the comparison model. - 𝒪̃(n²/b) time using 𝒪̃(b) space, for any b ∈ [√n,n], in the word RAM model. This gives an 𝒪̃(n^{1+ε})-time and 𝒪̃(n^{1-ε})-space algorithm to compute δ, for any 0 < ε ≤ 1/2. Let us remark that our algorithms compute S_T(k), for all k, within the same complexities.

Cite as

Giulia Bernardini, Gabriele Fici, Paweł Gawrychowski, and Solon P. Pissis. Substring Complexity in Sublinear Space. In 34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 283, pp. 12:1-12:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@InProceedings{bernardini_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.12,
  author =	{Bernardini, Giulia and Fici, Gabriele and Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Pissis, Solon P.},
  title =	{{Substring Complexity in Sublinear Space}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-289-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{283},
  editor =	{Iwata, Satoru and Kakimura, Naonori},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-193143},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: sublinear-space algorithm, string algorithm, substring complexity}
}
Document
Reconstructing Phylogenetic Networks via Cherry Picking and Machine Learning

Authors: Giulia Bernardini, Leo van Iersel, Esther Julien, and Leen Stougie

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 242, 22nd International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2022)


Abstract
Combining a set of phylogenetic trees into a single phylogenetic network that explains all of them is a fundamental challenge in evolutionary studies. In this paper, we apply the recently-introduced theoretical framework of cherry picking to design a class of heuristics that are guaranteed to produce a network containing each of the input trees, for practical-size datasets. The main contribution of this paper is the design and training of a machine learning model that captures essential information on the structure of the input trees and guides the algorithms towards better solutions. This is one of the first applications of machine learning to phylogenetic studies, and we show its promise with a proof-of-concept experimental study conducted on both simulated and real data consisting of binary trees with no missing taxa.

Cite as

Giulia Bernardini, Leo van Iersel, Esther Julien, and Leen Stougie. Reconstructing Phylogenetic Networks via Cherry Picking and Machine Learning. In 22nd International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 242, pp. 16:1-16:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)


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@InProceedings{bernardini_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2022.16,
  author =	{Bernardini, Giulia and van Iersel, Leo and Julien, Esther and Stougie, Leen},
  title =	{{Reconstructing Phylogenetic Networks via Cherry Picking and Machine Learning}},
  booktitle =	{22nd International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2022)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-243-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{242},
  editor =	{Boucher, Christina and Rahmann, Sven},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2022.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-170507},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2022.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Phylogenetics, Hybridization, Cherry Picking, Machine Learning, Heuristic}
}
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