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Quantum Closest-Pair Search for Biological Sequences via k-Mer Distribution Statistics

Authors: Zhezheng Xander Song and Carl Kingsford

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 390, 26th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2026)


Abstract
Finding highly similar pairs of biological sequences is a fundamental task in bioinformatics. For alignment-free k-mer distributional similarities, the induced feature space is high-dimensional and lacks the low-dimensional geometric structure used by classical exact closest-pair algorithms. Thus, for a collection of N sequences in the pairwise-score setting, exhaustive evaluation over the binom(N,2) candidate pairs is the natural classical baseline. We present the first quantum framework targeting alignment-free closest-pair search in biological sequence collections using distributional k-mer statistics. The central technical contribution is the construction of a coherent pairwise-score estimation circuit for this similarity measure. It encodes empirical k-mer distributions as square-root amplitude states and provides a sparse prefix-tree construction for preparing these states, under which the state overlap is exactly the Bhattacharyya coefficient. Standard SWAP-test and quantum-amplitude-estimation subroutines provide a coherent bounded-precision estimator for the squared Bhattacharyya overlap. We analyze maximum finding under an explicit assumption that a fixed ε-resolved total order over all legal pairs admits an efficient clean coherent implementation. Under this assumption, the procedure returns, with probability at least 2/3, a pair whose squared Bhattacharyya score is within ε of the optimal score, using O(N) expected comparison-oracle calls. If the optimal score is separated from every strictly suboptimal score by more than ε, the returned pair is exactly optimal. Combining this comparison-order assumption with an idealized qRAM-style data-access model gives the conditional sequential gate complexity Õ(NL/ε), whereas explicit multiplexed indexed loading gives Õ(N²L/ε). We also provide a proof-of-concept Q#implementation that integrates coherent indexed loading, SWAP-test-based score estimation, finite-precision marking, and Grover-style search, providing circuit-level validation of the main computational components.

Cite as

Zhezheng Xander Song and Carl Kingsford. Quantum Closest-Pair Search for Biological Sequences via k-Mer Distribution Statistics. In 26th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 390, pp. 9:1-9:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{song_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2026.9,
  author =	{Song, Zhezheng Xander and Kingsford, Carl},
  title =	{{Quantum Closest-Pair Search for Biological Sequences via k-Mer Distribution Statistics}},
  booktitle =	{26th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2026)},
  pages =	{9:1--9:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-446-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{390},
  editor =	{El-Mabrouk, Nadia and Vandin, Fabio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2026.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275130},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2026.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: quantum algorithms, closest-pair search, k-mer statistics, Bhattacharyya coefficient, D\"{u}rr-H{\o}yer maximum finding, quantum amplitude estimation}
}

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