30 Search Results for "Sirén, Jouni"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.12
Fast Select Queries Using Hybrid Bitvectors

Authors: Eric Chiu and Dominik Kempa

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

Abstract
One of the central problems in the design of compressed data structures is the efficient support for rank and select queries on bitvectors. These two operations form the backbone of more complex data structures used for the compact representation of texts, trees, graphs, or grids. One effective solution is the so-called hybrid bitvector implementation, which partitions the input bitvector into blocks and adaptively selects an encoding method - such as run-length, plain, or minority encoding - based on local redundancy. Experiments have shown that hybrid bitvectors achieve excellent all-around performance on repetitive and non-repetitive inputs. Current hybrid bitvector implementations, however, support only rank queries (i.e., counting the number of ones up to a given position) and lack support for select queries (which ask for the position of a given occurrence of a given bit), which limits their applicability. In this paper, we propose a method to add support for select queries to hybrid bitvectors, and we evaluate the resulting implementation on repetitive and non-repetitive inputs. Our results show that hybrid bitvectors offer very strong all-around performance, combining high query speed with space efficiency and remaining consistently on or near the Pareto frontier.
Cite as

Eric Chiu and Dominik Kempa. Fast Select Queries Using Hybrid Bitvectors. In 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 371, pp. 12:1-12:11, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{chiu_et_al:LIPIcs.SEA.2026.12,
  author =	{Chiu, Eric and Kempa, Dominik},
  title =	{{Fast Select Queries Using Hybrid Bitvectors}},
  booktitle =	{24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:11},
  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.2026.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260168},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: compressed bitvectors, hybrid bitvector, select queries}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.3
Computing k-mers in Graphs

Authors: Jarno N. Alanko and Máximo Pérez-López

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

Abstract
We initiate the study of computational problems on k-mers (strings of length k) in labeled graphs. As a starting point, we consider the problem of counting the number of distinct k-mers found on the walks of a graph. We establish that this is #P-hard, even on connected deterministic DAGs. However, in the class of deterministic Wheeler graphs (Gagie, Manzini, and Sirén, TCS 2017), we show that distinct k-mers of such a graph W = (V, E) can be counted using O(|W|k) or O(n⁴ log k) arithmetic operations, where n = |V|, m = |E| and |W| = n+m. The latter result uses a new generalization of the technique of prefix doubling to Wheeler graphs. To generalize our results beyond Wheeler graphs, we discuss ways to transform a graph into a Wheeler graph in a manner that preserves the k-mers. As an application of our k-mer counting algorithms, we construct a representation of the de Bruijn graph of the k-mers that occupies O(n_k + |W|k log(max_{1 ≤ 𝓁 ≤ k} n_𝓁) + σlog m) bits of space, where n_𝓁 is the number of distinct 𝓁-mers in the Wheeler graph, and σ is the size of the alphabet. We show how to construct it in the same time complexity. Given that the Wheeler graph can be exponentially smaller than the de Bruijn graph, for large k this provides a theoretical improvement over previous de Bruijn graph construction methods from graphs, which must spend Ω(k) time per k-mer in the graph.
Cite as

Jarno N. Alanko and Máximo Pérez-López. Computing k-mers in Graphs. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 3:1-3:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{alanko_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.3,
  author =	{Alanko, Jarno N. and P\'{e}rez-L\'{o}pez, M\'{a}ximo},
  title =	{{Computing k-mers in Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:17},
  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.2026.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259294},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Wheeler graph, Wheeler language, de Bruijn graph, graph, k-mer, q-gram, DFA, #P-hard}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.7
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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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
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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.62
Relative Compressed Reverse Suffix Array

Authors: Muhammed Oguzhan Kulekci, Mano Prakash Parthasarathi, Rahul Shah, and Sharma V. Thankachan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract
Suffix trees and suffix arrays are two fundamental data structures in the field of string algorithms. For a string (a.k.a. text or sequence) of length n over an alphabet of size σ, these structures typically require O(nlog n) bits of space. The FM-index provides a compressed representation of the suffix array in ≈ nlog σ bits, allowing for efficient queries on both the suffix array and its inverse array in near logarithmic time. In certain applications, such as approximate pattern matching (i.e., with wildcards, mismatches, edits), there is a need to access the suffix array of a text, as well as the suffix array of text’s reverse. Motivated by this, we explore the possibility of encoding the suffix array of the reversed text in a compact form, assuming the availability of the FM-index for the original text. Our first solution is an O(n)-bit (relative) encoding of the suffix array of the reversed text, with the time for decoding an entry being only O(log^*n) times that of decoding an entry in the text’s suffix array using FM-index. We then demonstrate how to reduce the space to O(n/κ) bits for a parameter κ, while multiplicative factor in time becomes approximately O(κlog^*n+κ³). We can also support inverse suffix array and longest common extension queries on the reversed text. These results are achieved through some careful and non-trivial application of various succinct data structure techniques.
Cite as

Muhammed Oguzhan Kulekci, Mano Prakash Parthasarathi, Rahul Shah, and Sharma V. Thankachan. Relative Compressed Reverse Suffix Array. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 62:1-62:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{kulekci_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.62,
  author =	{Kulekci, Muhammed Oguzhan and Parthasarathi, Mano Prakash and Shah, Rahul and Thankachan, Sharma V.},
  title =	{{Relative Compressed Reverse Suffix Array}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{62:1--62:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.62},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255512},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.62},
  annote =	{Keywords: String Matching, Text Indexing, Data Structures, Suffix Trees}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.8
Lossless Pangenome Indexing Using Tag Arrays

Authors: Parsa Eskandar, Benedict Paten, and Jouni Sirén

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

Abstract
Pangenome graphs represent the genomic variation by encoding multiple haplotypes within a unified graph structure. However, efficient and lossless indexing of such structures remains challenging due to the scale and complexity of pangenomic data. We present a practical and scalable indexing framework based on tag arrays, which annotate positions in the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) with graph coordinates. Our method extends the FM-index with a run-length compressed tag structure that enables efficient retrieval of all unique graph locations where a query pattern appears. We introduce a novel construction algorithm that combines unique k-mers, graph-based extensions, and haplotype traversal to compute the tag array in a memory-efficient manner. To support large genomes, we process each chromosome independently and then merge the results into a unified index using properties of the multi-string BWT and r-index. Our evaluation on the HPRC graphs demonstrates that the tag array structure compresses effectively, scales well with added haplotypes, and preserves accurate mapping information across diverse regions of the genome. This indexing method enables lossless and haplotype-aware querying in complex pangenomes and offers a practical indexing layer to develop scalable aligners and downstream graph-based analysis tools.
Cite as

Parsa Eskandar, Benedict Paten, and Jouni Sirén. Lossless Pangenome Indexing Using Tag Arrays. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 8:1-8:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{eskandar_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.8,
  author =	{Eskandar, Parsa and Paten, Benedict and Sir\'{e}n, Jouni},
  title =	{{Lossless Pangenome Indexing Using Tag Arrays}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:20},
  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.2025.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239348},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: pangenome indexing, Burrows-Wheeler transform, tag arrays}
}
Document
Invited Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.2
We Are What We Index; a Primer for the Wheeler Graph Era (Invited Talk)

Authors: Ben Langmead

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

Abstract
Since the arrival of second-generation sequencing, we have needed to build indexes over reference sequences - e.g. genomes and transcriptomes - in order to solve read alignment and classification problems efficiently [Langmead et al., 2009; Li and Durbin, 2009; Li et al., 2009]. The rule has been: what we can index determines what we can do. When indexing strings, we can use methods like suffix arrays [Manber and Myers, 1993], the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) [Burrows and Wheeler, 1994] / FM Index [Ferragina and Manzini, 2000], or k-mer indexes [Marchet et al., 2021]. What if we want to index objects more complex than strings? A pangenome, for example, is a large collection of similar strings, e.g. the hundreds of assemblies that make up the Human Pangenome Reference [Liao et al., 2023] or all the bacteria in the Refseq database [Goldfarb et al., 2025]. We may wish to combine these strings into a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) or a graph first. Can we index those efficiently? In many useful cases the answer is "yes," but in others the answer is "no." The story of how we learned exactly when the answer is "yes" versus "no" unfolded through a sequence of insights. Here we review this story, eventually arriving at the definition of Wheeler graphs as discovered and formalized by Gagie, Manzini and Sirén [Gagie et al., 2017]. We will focus on indexes based on the BWT, since these (a) are lossless full-text indexes, (b) are widely used in practice [Langmead et al., 2009; Li and Durbin, 2009], and (c) form the theoretical throughline for all the indexing strategies on the path to Wheeler graphs. We will trace the BWT-based indexing story from the early days of the FM Index, though its step-by-step gobbling up of trees (XBW-transform [Ferragina et al., 2005]) and de Bruijn Graphs (BOSS representation [Bowe et al., 2012]), and to the eventual formalization of Wheeler graphs [Gagie et al., 2017]. Along the way, we will define and update our notions of what it means to track a consecutive range of elements in the structure, and what it means for an index to be efficient. We will also connect these notions to automata [Sipser, 1996], noting how the indexability of Wheeler graphs (also called Wheeler automata) is connected to the mechanics of how to efficiently represent and simulate a finite automaton [Alanko et al., 2021]. With this context, we can imagine improved indexes for the future of genomics and pangenomics. De Bruijn are extremely practical and are the most widely used among the non-string data structures that are also Wheeler graphs. But we might prefer other options. For example, de Bruijn graphs have the undesirable property that they usually encode not only the true longer-than-k substrings of the original text, but also "false" substrings that span repeats. Related to this, paths through the de Bruijn graph can "glue" substrings together that are horizontally distant in the MSA. Could other Wheeler graphs be practical alternatives to de Bruijn graphs? For instance, the original GCSA study by Sirén, Välimäki and Mäkinen proposed a way to convert a multiple alignment into an automaton that either is a Wheeler graph or can be made into one [Sirén et al., 2014]. This warrants further exploration, possibly with the help of improved tools for solving the NP-complete problem of recognizing whether a graph is a Wheeler graph [Chao et al., 2023]. The notion of BWT tunnels [Baier, 2018] gives another route: we can begin with a concatenated pangenome strings and compress it by identifying and collapsing BWT tunnels. This yields a Wheeler graph that is compressed like the de Bruijn graph, but without departing from the exact contents or coordinate systems of the original genomes. The future might need us to explore all these Wheeler-graph indexes, along with the also highly practical and always-improving world of indexes buiover collections of strings [Gagie et al., 2018].
Cite as

Ben Langmead. We Are What We Index; a Primer for the Wheeler Graph Era (Invited Talk). In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 2:1-2:2, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{langmead:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.2,
  author =	{Langmead, Ben},
  title =	{{We Are What We Index; a Primer for the Wheeler Graph Era}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:2},
  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.2025.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239288},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Indexing, Burrows-Wheeler Transform}
}
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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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.
Cite as

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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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
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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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
Research
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.10
Faster Run-Length Compressed Suffix Arrays

Authors: Nathaniel K. Brown, Travis Gagie, Giovanni Manzini, Gonzalo Navarro, and Marinella Sciortino

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

Abstract
We first review how we can store a run-length compressed suffix array (RLCSA) for a text T of length n over an alphabet of size σ whose Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) consists of r runs in O (r log (n / r) + r log σ + σ) bits such that later, given character a and the suffix-array (SA) interval for P, we can find the SA interval for a P in O (log r_a + log log n) time, where r_a is the number of runs of copies of a in the BWT. We then show how to modify the RLCSA such that we find the SA interval for a P in only O (log r_a) time, without increasing its asymptotic space bound. Our key idea is applying a result by Nishimoto and Tabei (ICALP 2021) and then replacing rank queries on sparse bitvectors by a constant number of select queries. We also review two-level indexing and discuss how our faster RLCSA may be useful in improving it. Finally, we briefly discuss how two-level indexing may speed up a recent heuristic for finding maximal exact matches of a pattern with respect to an indexed text.
Cite as

Nathaniel K. Brown, Travis Gagie, Giovanni Manzini, Gonzalo Navarro, and Marinella Sciortino. Faster Run-Length Compressed Suffix Arrays. 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. 10:1-10:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{brown_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.10,
  author =	{Brown, Nathaniel K. and Gagie, Travis and Manzini, Giovanni and Navarro, Gonzalo and Sciortino, Marinella},
  title =	{{Faster Run-Length Compressed Suffix Arrays}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{10:1--10:15},
  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.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238095},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Run-length compressed suffix arrays, interpolative coding, two-level indexing}
}
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)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@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}
}
  • Refine by Type
  • 30 Document/PDF
  • 25 Document/HTML

  • Refine by Publication Year
  • 7 2026
  • 19 2025
  • 1 2021
  • 1 2018
  • 1 2017
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Author
  • 4 Gagie, Travis
  • 4 Sirén, Jouni
  • 3 Alanko, Jarno N.
  • 3 Cotumaccio, Nicola
  • 3 Manzini, Giovanni
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Series/Journal
  • 21 LIPIcs
  • 8 OASIcs
  • 1 DagSemProc

  • Refine by Classification
  • 15 Theory of computation → Pattern matching
  • 8 Theory of computation → Data compression
  • 7 Theory of computation → Data structures design and analysis
  • 5 Theory of computation → Graph algorithms analysis
  • 4 Applied computing → Computational genomics
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Keyword
  • 6 Burrows-Wheeler Transform
  • 5 Burrows-Wheeler transform
  • 4 compressed data structures
  • 4 pattern matching
  • 2 Data Structures
  • Show More...

Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2026 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact