18 Search Results for "Garrison, Erik"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.20
QuadRank: Engineering a High Throughput Rank

Authors: Ragnar Groot Koerkamp

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 371, 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)

Abstract
Motivation. Given a text, a query rank(q, c) counts the number of occurrences of character c among the first q characters of the text. Space-efficient methods to answer these rank queries form an important building block in many succinct data structures. For example, the FM-index [Ferragina and Manzini, 2000] is a widely used data structure that uses rank queries to locate all occurrences of a pattern in a text. In bioinformatics applications, the goal is usually to process large inputs as fast as possible. Thus, data structures should have high throughput when used with many threads. Contributions. We first survey existing results on rank data structures. For the σ = 2 binary alphabet, we then develop BiRank, which has 3.28% space overhead. BiRank merges the central ideas of two recent papers: (1) we interleave (inline) offsets in each cache line of the underlying bit vector [Laws et al., 2024], reducing cache misses, and (2) these offsets are to the middle of each block so that only half of each needs popcounting [Gottlieb and Reinert, 2025]. In QuadRank (14.4% overhead), we extend these techniques to the σ = 4 (DNA) alphabet. Both data structures typically require only a single cache miss per query, making them highly suitable for high-throughput and memory-bound settings. To enable efficient batch-processing, we support prefetching the cache lines required to answer upcoming queries. Results. BiRank and QuadRank are around 1.5× and 2× faster than similar-overhead methods that do not use interleaving. Prefetching gives an additional 2× speedup, at which point the dual-channel DDR4 RAM bandwidth becomes a hard limit on the total throughput. With prefetching, both methods outperform all other methods apart from SPIDER [Laws et al., 2024] by 2×. When using QuadRank with prefetching in a toy count-only FM-index, QuadFm, this results in a smaller size and up to 4× speedup over Genedex, a state-of-the-art batching FM-index implementation. Conclusion. Optimizing data structures for high throughput, by minimizing cache misses and branch-misses and adding support for prefetching, can result in significant speedups when benchmarks are adjusted accordingly.
Cite as

Ragnar Groot Koerkamp. QuadRank: Engineering a High Throughput Rank. In 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 371, pp. 20:1-20:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{grootkoerkamp:LIPIcs.SEA.2026.20,
  author =	{Groot Koerkamp, Ragnar},
  title =	{{QuadRank: Engineering a High Throughput Rank}},
  booktitle =	{24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-422-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{371},
  editor =	{Aum\"{u}ller, Martin and Finocchi, Irene},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260248},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Rank, Succinct Data Structures, Cache Performance, Prefetching}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14
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
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.16
Merging RLBWTs Adaptively

Authors: Travis Gagie

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

Abstract
We show how to merge two run-length compressed Burrows-Wheeler Transforms (RLBWTs) into a run-length compressed extended Burrows-Wheeler Transform (eBWT) in O (r) space and O ((r + L) log (m + n)) time, where m and n are the lengths of the uncompressed strings, r is the number of runs in the final eBWT and L is the sum of its irreducible LCP values.
Cite as

Travis Gagie. Merging RLBWTs Adaptively. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 16:1-16:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{gagie:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.16,
  author =	{Gagie, Travis},
  title =	{{Merging RLBWTs Adaptively}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:15},
  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.2026.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259420},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler Transform, run-length compression, RLBWT, construction, merging}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.29
The TAG Array of a Multiple Sequence Alignment

Authors: Jannik Olbrich and Enno Ohlebusch

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

Abstract
Modern genomic analyses increasingly rely on pangenomes, that is, representations of the genome of entire populations. The simplest representation of a pangenome is a set of individual genome sequences. Compared to e.g. sequence graphs, this has the advantage that efficient exact search via indexes based on the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) is possible, that no chimeric sequences are created, and that the results are not influenced by heuristics. However, such an index may report a match in thousands of positions even if these all correspond to the same locus, making downstream analysis unnecessarily more expensive. For sufficiently similar sequences (e.g. human chromosomes), a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) can be computed. Since an MSA tends to group similar strings in the same columns, it is likely that a string occurring thousands of times in the pangenome can be described by very few columns in the MSA. We describe a method to tag entries in the BWT with the corresponding column in the MSA and develop an index that can map matches in the BWT to columns in the MSA in time proportional to the output. As a by-product, we can project a match to a designated reference genome, a capability that current pangenome aligners lack.
Cite as

Jannik Olbrich and Enno Ohlebusch. The TAG Array of a Multiple Sequence Alignment. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 29:1-29:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{olbrich_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.29,
  author =	{Olbrich, Jannik and Ohlebusch, Enno},
  title =	{{The TAG Array of a Multiple Sequence Alignment}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:14},
  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.2026.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259555},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler Transform, pattern matching, index data structure, pangenomics}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.29
Gaze Beyond Limits: Integrating Eye-Tracking and Augmented Reality for Next-Generation Spacesuit Interaction

Authors: Jiayu He, Yifan Li, Oliver R. Runswick, Peter D. Hodkinson, Jarle Steinberg, Felix Gorbatsevich, and Yang Gao

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 130, Advancing Human-Computer Interaction for Space Exploration (SpaceCHI 2025)

Abstract
Extravehicular activities (EVAs) are increasingly frequent in human spaceflight, particularly in spacecraft maintenance, scientific research, and planetary exploration. Spacesuits are essential for sustaining astronauts in the harsh environment of space, making their design a key factor in the success of EVA missions. The development of spacesuit technology has traditionally been driven by highly engineered solutions focused on life support, mission adaptability and operational efficiency. Modern spacesuits prioritize maintaining optimal internal temperature, humidity and pressure, as well as withstanding extreme temperature fluctuations and providing robust protection against micrometeoroid impacts and space debris. However, their bulkiness and rigidity impose significant physical strain on astronauts, reducing mobility and dexterity, particularly in tasks requiring fine motor control. The restricted field of view further complicates situational awareness, increasing the cognitive load during high-precision operations. While traditional spacesuits support basic EVA tasks, future space exploration shifting toward long-duration lunar and Martian surface missions demand more adaptive, intelligent, and astronaut-centric designs to overcome current constraints. To explore a next-generation spacesuit, this paper proposed an in-process eye-tracking embedded Augmented Reality (AR) Spacesuit System to enhance astronaut-environment interactions. By leveraging Segment-Anything Models (SAM) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs), we demonstrate a four-step approach to enable top-down gaze detection to minimize erroneous fixation data, gaze-based segmentation of objects of interest, real-time contextual assistance via AR overlays and hands-free operation within the spacesuit. This approach enhances real-time situational awareness and improves EVA task efficiency. We conclude with an exploration of the AR Helmet System’s potential in revolutionizing human-space interaction paradigms for future long-duration deep-space missions and discuss the further optimization of eye-tracking interactions using VLMs to predict astronaut intent and highlight relevant objects preemptively.
Cite as

Jiayu He, Yifan Li, Oliver R. Runswick, Peter D. Hodkinson, Jarle Steinberg, Felix Gorbatsevich, and Yang Gao. Gaze Beyond Limits: Integrating Eye-Tracking and Augmented Reality for Next-Generation Spacesuit Interaction. In Advancing Human-Computer Interaction for Space Exploration (SpaceCHI 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 130, pp. 29:1-29:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{he_et_al:OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.29,
  author =	{He, Jiayu and Li, Yifan and Runswick, Oliver R. and Hodkinson, Peter D. and Steinberg, Jarle and Gorbatsevich, Felix and Gao, Yang},
  title =	{{Gaze Beyond Limits: Integrating Eye-Tracking and Augmented Reality for Next-Generation Spacesuit Interaction}},
  booktitle =	{Advancing Human-Computer Interaction for Space Exploration (SpaceCHI 2025)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:15},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-384-3},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{130},
  editor =	{Bensch, Leonie and Nilsson, Tommy and Nisser, Martin and Pataranutaporn, Pat and Schmidt, Albrecht and Sumini, Valentina},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-240197},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: Augmented Reality (AR), Eye-Tracking, Cognitive Load/Workload, Segment Anything Model (SAM), Visual Language Models (VLMs)}
}
Document
Invited Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.1
Recursive Parsing and Grammar Compression in the Era of Pangenomics (Invited Talk)

Authors: Christina Boucher

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

Abstract
Prefix-Free Parsing (PFP) and its recursive variant (RPFP) provide a scalable framework for compressing and indexing large genomic datasets. By enabling efficient construction of succinct data structures, these methods support fast and memory-efficient read alignment across thousands of genomes. Their deterministic and modular design makes them especially well-suited for pangenomics and large-scale sequence analysis.
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Christina Boucher. Recursive Parsing and Grammar Compression in the Era of Pangenomics (Invited Talk). In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 1:1-1:2, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{boucher:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.1,
  author =	{Boucher, Christina},
  title =	{{Recursive Parsing and Grammar Compression in the Era of Pangenomics}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:2},
  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.2025.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239278},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Prefix-Free Parsing, Recursive Prefix-Free Parsing, Grammar-Based Compression, Succinct Data Structures, RePair Compression}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.10
DiVerG: Scalable Distance Index for Validation of Paired-End Alignments in Sequence Graphs

Authors: Ali Ghaffaari, Alexander Schönhuth, and Tobias Marschall

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

Abstract
Determining the distance between two loci within a genomic region is a recurrent operation in various tasks in computational genomics. A notable example of this task arises in paired-end read mapping as a form of validation of distances between multiple alignments. While straightforward for a single genome, graph-based reference structures render the operation considerably more involved. Given the sheer number of such queries in a typical read mapping experiment, an efficient algorithm for answering distance queries is crucial. In this paper, we introduce DiVerG, a compact data structure as well as a fast and scalable algorithm, for constructing distance indexes for general sequence graphs on multi-core CPU and many-core GPU architectures. DiVerG is based on PairG [Jain et al., 2019], but overcomes the limitations of PairG by exploiting the extensive potential for improvements in terms of scalability and space efficiency. As a consequence, DiVerG can process substantially larger datasets, such as whole human genomes, which are unmanageable by PairG. DiVerG offers faster index construction time and consistently faster query time with gains proportional to the size of the underlying compact data structure. We demonstrate that our method performs favorably on multiple real datasets at various scales. DiVerG achieves superior performance over PairG; e.g. resulting to 2.5-4x speed-up in query time, 44-340x smaller index size, and 3-50x faster construction time for the genome graph of the MHC region, as a particularly variable region of the human genome. The implementation is available at: https://github.com/cartoonist/diverg
Cite as

Ali Ghaffaari, Alexander Schönhuth, and Tobias Marschall. DiVerG: Scalable Distance Index for Validation of Paired-End Alignments in Sequence Graphs. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 10:1-10:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{ghaffaari_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.10,
  author =	{Ghaffaari, Ali and Sch\"{o}nhuth, Alexander and Marschall, Tobias},
  title =	{{DiVerG: Scalable Distance Index for Validation of Paired-End Alignments in Sequence Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:24},
  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.2025.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239369},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Sequence graph, distance index, read mapping, sparse matrix}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.14
Human Readable Compression of GFA Paths Using Grammar-Based Code

Authors: Peter Heringer and Daniel Doerr

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

Abstract
Pangenome graphs offer a compact and comprehensive representation of genomic diversity, improving tasks such as variant calling, genotyping, and other downstream analyses. Although the underlying graph structures scale sublinearly with the number of haplotypes, the widely used GFA file format suffers from rapidly growing file sizes due to the explicit and repetitive encoding of haplotype paths. In this work, we introduce an extension to the GFA format that enables efficient grammar-based compression of haplotype paths while retaining human readability. In addition, grammar-based encoding provides an efficient in-memory data structure that does not require decompression, but conversely improves the runtime of many computational tasks that involve haplotype comparisons. We present sqz, a method that makes use of the proposed format extension to encode haplotype paths using byte pair encoding, a grammar-based compression scheme. We evaluate sqz on recent human pangenome graphs from Heumos et al. and the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC), comparing it to existing compressors bgzip, gbz, and sequitur. sqz scales sublinearly with the number of haplotypes in a pangenome graph and consistently achieves higher compression ratios than sequitur and up to 5 times better compression than bgzip in HPRC graphs and up to 10 times in the graph from Heumos et al.. When combined with bgzip, sqz matches or excels the compression ratio of gbz across all our datasets. These results demonstrate the potential of our proposed extension of the GFA format in reducing haplotype path redundancy and improving storage efficiency for pangenome graphs.
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Peter Heringer and Daniel Doerr. Human Readable Compression of GFA Paths Using Grammar-Based Code. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 14:1-14:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{heringer_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.14,
  author =	{Heringer, Peter and Doerr, Daniel},
  title =	{{Human Readable Compression of GFA Paths Using Grammar-Based Code}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:19},
  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.2025.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239395},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: pangenomics, pangenome graphs, compression, grammar-based code, byte pair encoding}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.17
An Efficient Data Structure and Algorithm for Long-Match Query in Run-Length Compressed BWT

Authors: Ahsan Sanaullah, Degui Zhi, and Shaojie Zhang

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

Abstract
String matching problems in bioinformatics are typically for finding exact substring matches between a query and a reference text. Previous formulations often focus on maximum exact matches (MEMs). However, multiple occurrences of substrings of the query in the text that are long enough but not maximal may not be captured by MEMs. Such long matches can be informative, especially when the text is a collection of similar sequences such as genomes. In this paper, we describe a new type of match between a pattern and a text that aren't necessarily maximal in the query, but still contain useful matching information: locally maximal exact matches (LEMs). There are usually a large amount of LEMs, so we only consider those above some length threshold ℒ. These are referred to as long LEMs. The purpose of long LEMs is to capture substring matches between a query and a text that are not necessarily maximal in the pattern but still long enough to be important. Therefore efficient long LEMs finding algorithms are desired for these datasets. However, these datasets are too large to query on traditional string indexes. Fortunately, these datasets are very repetitive. Recently, compressed string indexes that take advantage of the redundancy in the data but retain efficient querying capability have been proposed as a solution. We therefore give an efficient algorithm for computing all the long LEMs of a query and a text in a BWT runs compressed string index. We describe an O(m+occ) expected time algorithm that relies on an O(r) words space string index for outputting all long LEMs of a pattern with respect to a text given the matching statistics of the pattern with respect to the text. Here m is the length of the query, occ is the number of long LEMs outputted, and r is the number of runs in the BWT of the text. The O(r) space string index we describe relies on an adaptation of the move data structure by Nishimoto and Tabei. We are able to support LCP[i] queries in constant time given SA[i]. In other words, we answer PLCP[i] queries in constant time. These PLCP queries enable the efficient long LEM query. Long LEMs may provide useful similarity information between a pattern and a text that MEMs may ignore. This information is particularly useful in pangenome and biobank scale haplotype panel contexts.
Cite as

Ahsan Sanaullah, Degui Zhi, and Shaojie Zhang. An Efficient Data Structure and Algorithm for Long-Match Query in Run-Length Compressed BWT. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 17:1-17:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{sanaullah_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.17,
  author =	{Sanaullah, Ahsan and Zhi, Degui and Zhang, Shaojie},
  title =	{{An Efficient Data Structure and Algorithm for Long-Match Query in Run-Length Compressed BWT}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:25},
  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.2025.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239433},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: BWT, LEM, Long LEM, MEM, Run Length Compressed BWT, Move Data Structure, Pangenome}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.20
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
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.7
Conditional Lower Bounds for String Matching in Labelled Graphs

Authors: Massimo Equi

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

Abstract
The problem of String Matching in Labelled Graphs (SMLG) is one possible generalization of the classic problem of finding a string inside another of greater length. In its most general form, SMLG asks to find a match for a string into a graph, which can be directed or undirected. As for string matching, many different variations are possible. For example, the match could be exact or approximate, and the match could lie on a path or a walk. Some of these variations easily fall into the NP-hard realm, while other variants are solvable in polynomial time. For the latter ones, fine-grained complexity has been a game changer in proving quadratic conditional lower bounds, allowing to finally close the gap with those upper bounds that remained unmatched for almost two decades. If the match is allowed to be approximate, SMLG enjoys the same conditional quadratic lower bounds shown for example for edit distance (Backurs and Indyk, STOC '15). The case that really requires ad hoc conditional lower bounds is the one of finding an exact match that lies on a walk. In this work, we focus on explaining various conditional lower bounds for this version of SMLG, with the goal of giving an overall perspective that could help understand which aspects of the problem make it quadratic. We will introduce the reader to the field of fine-grained complexity and show how it can successfully provide the exact type of lower bounds needed for polynomial problems such as SMLG.
Cite as

Massimo Equi. Conditional Lower Bounds for String Matching in Labelled Graphs. 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. 7:1-7:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{equi:OASIcs.Grossi.7,
  author =	{Equi, Massimo},
  title =	{{Conditional Lower Bounds for String Matching in Labelled Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{7:1--7:13},
  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.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238063},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: conditional lower bounds, strong exponential time hypothesis, fine-grained complexity, string matching, graphs}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.3
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
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.7
Algorithms for Computing Very Large BWTs: a Short Survey

Authors: Diego Díaz-Domínguez, Lavinia Egidi, Veronica Guerrini, Felipe A. Louza, and Giovanna Rosone

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

Abstract
The Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) is a fundamental string transformation that, although initially introduced for data compression, has been extensively utilized across various domains, including text indexing and pattern matching within large datasets. Although the BWT construction is linear, the constants make the task impractical for large datasets, and as highlighted by Ferragina et al. [Paolo Ferragina et al., 2012], "to use it, one must first build it!". Thus, the construction of the BWT remains a significant challenge. For these reasons, during the past three decades there has been a succession of new algorithms for its construction using techniques that work in external memory or that use text compression. In this survey, we revise some of the most important advancements and tools presented in the past years for computing large BWTs exploiting external memory or text compression approaches without using additional information about the data.
Cite as

Diego Díaz-Domínguez, Lavinia Egidi, Veronica Guerrini, Felipe A. Louza, and Giovanna Rosone. Algorithms for Computing Very Large BWTs: a Short Survey. In The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 131, pp. 7:1-7:28, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{diazdominguez_et_al:OASIcs.Manzini.7,
  author =	{D{\'\i}az-Dom{\'\i}nguez, Diego and Egidi, Lavinia and Guerrini, Veronica and Louza, Felipe A. and Rosone, Giovanna},
  title =	{{Algorithms for Computing Very Large BWTs: a Short Survey}},
  booktitle =	{The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{7:1--7:28},
  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.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239151},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler transform, Extended Burrows-Wheeler transform, external memory, text compression, longest common prefix}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.13
Graph Indexing Beyond Wheeler Graphs

Authors: Jarno N. Alanko, Elena Biagi, Massimo Equi, Veli Mäkinen, Simon J. Puglisi, Nicola Rizzo, Kunihiko Sadakane, and Jouni Sirén

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

Abstract
After the discovery of the FM index, which linked the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) to pattern matching on strings, several contemporaneous strands of research began on indexing more complex structures with the BWT, such as tries, finite languages, de Bruijn graphs, and aligned sequences. These directions can now be viewed as culminating in the theory of Wheeler Graphs, but sometimes they go beyond. This chapter reviews the significant body of "proto Wheeler Graph" indexes, many of which exploit characteristics of their specific case to outperform Wheeler graphs, especially in practice.
Cite as

Jarno N. Alanko, Elena Biagi, Massimo Equi, Veli Mäkinen, Simon J. Puglisi, Nicola Rizzo, Kunihiko Sadakane, and Jouni Sirén. Graph Indexing Beyond Wheeler Graphs. In The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 131, pp. 13:1-13:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{alanko_et_al:OASIcs.Manzini.13,
  author =	{Alanko, Jarno N. and Biagi, Elena and Equi, Massimo and M\"{a}kinen, Veli and Puglisi, Simon J. and Rizzo, Nicola and Sadakane, Kunihiko and Sir\'{e}n, Jouni},
  title =	{{Graph Indexing Beyond Wheeler Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{13:1--13:29},
  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.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239215},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: indexing, compression, compressed data structures, string algorithms, pattern matching}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2025.13
Pangenome Graph Indexing via the Multidollar-BWT

Authors: Davide Cozzi, Brian Riccardi, Luca Denti, Simone Ciccolella, Kunihiko Sadakane, and Paola Bonizzoni

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 338, 23rd International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2025)

Abstract
Indexing pangenome graphs is a major algorithmic challenge in computational pangenomics, a recent and active research field that seeks to use graphs as representations of multiple genomes. Since these graphs are constructed from whole genome sequences of a species population, they can become very large, making indexing one of the most challenging problems. In this paper, we propose gindex, a novel indexing approach to solve the Graph Pattern Matching Problem based on the multidollar-BWT. Specifically, gindex aims to find all occurrences of a pattern in a sequence-labeled graph by overcoming two main limitations of GCSA2, one of the most widely used graph indexes: handling queries of arbitrary length and scaling to large graphs without pruning any complex regions. Moreover, we show how a smart preprocessing step can optimize the use of multidollar-BWT to skip small redundant sub-patterns and enhance gindex’s querying capabilities. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing it to GCSA2 in terms of index construction and query time, using different preprocessing modes on three pangenome graphs: one built from Drosophila genomes and two produced by the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium. The results show that gindex can scale on human pangenome graphs - which GCSA2 cannot index using large amounts of RAM - with acceptable memory and time requirements. Moreover, gindex achieves fast query times, although not as fast as GCSA2, which may produce false positives.
Cite as

Davide Cozzi, Brian Riccardi, Luca Denti, Simone Ciccolella, Kunihiko Sadakane, and Paola Bonizzoni. Pangenome Graph Indexing via the Multidollar-BWT. In 23rd International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 338, pp. 13:1-13:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{cozzi_et_al:LIPIcs.SEA.2025.13,
  author =	{Cozzi, Davide and Riccardi, Brian and Denti, Luca and Ciccolella, Simone and Sadakane, Kunihiko and Bonizzoni, Paola},
  title =	{{Pangenome Graph Indexing via the Multidollar-BWT}},
  booktitle =	{23rd International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2025)},
  pages =	{13:1--13:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-375-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{338},
  editor =	{Mutzel, Petra 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.SEA.2025.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-232515},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2025.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: Multidollar-BWT, Graph Index, Graph Pattern Matching, Pangenome Graph}
}
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