9 Search Results for "Alzamel, Mai"

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.2026.27
Exploring the Gap Between LCS and LCStr

Authors: Shay Golan, Matan Kraus, Ely Porat, and B. Riva Shalom

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

Abstract
The Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem and the Longest Common Substring (LCStr) problem are classical string problems with broad theoretical and practical significance. The former has a quadratic conditional lower bound [FOCS, 2015], while the latter admits a linear-time solution. In this paper, we study a natural variation of these problems, the Longest Common Subsequence-Substring (LCSS) problem. The LCSS problem seeks the longest string that is simultaneously a subsequence of one input string and a substring of the other. This variant bridges LCS and LCStr, raising intriguing algorithmic questions: Does the complexity of computing LCSS interpolate between the linear time of LCStr and the quadratic time of LCS? What about approximability? We also examine a natural extension of LCSS to multiple strings, parameterizing the balance between subsequence and substring requirements. Our results reveal several insights. First, under the SETH conjecture, the inherent complexity of LCSS is quadratic, similar to LCS. In contrast, we provide a linear-time approximation for LCSS. Finally, for the multi-string variant, unlike both problems, we design a quadratic-time algorithm, uncovering deeper structural properties of the problem. By studying the complexity of the LCSS problem, we aim to gain some understanding of what influences whether a variant of the LCS problem behaves more like the standard LCS or like LCStr. Our findings suggest that hybrid constraints can create computational "sweet spots," where problems become more tractable than their pure counterparts. This opens a broader research direction in constraint-mediated algorithm design. Beyond LCSS itself, our work highlights unexpected connections between subsequence and substring constraints, advancing the theoretical understanding of string problems and laying the foundation for new algorithmic techniques and complexity-theoretic insights in the rich space between classical string comparison paradigms.
Cite as

Shay Golan, Matan Kraus, Ely Porat, and B. Riva Shalom. Exploring the Gap Between LCS and LCStr. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 27:1-27:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{golan_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.27,
  author =	{Golan, Shay and Kraus, Matan and Porat, Ely and Shalom, B. Riva},
  title =	{{Exploring the Gap Between LCS and LCStr}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{27:1--27:21},
  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.2026.27},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259535},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: Longest Common Subsequence, Longest Common Substring, Conditional Lower Bound}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.36
Time-Optimal Construction of String Synchronizing Sets

Authors: Jonas Ellert and Tomasz Kociumaka

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

Abstract
A powerful design principle behind many modern string algorithms is local consistency: breaking the symmetry between string positions based on their small contexts so that matching fragments are handled consistently. Among the most influential instantiations of this principle are string synchronizing sets [Kempa & Kociumaka; STOC 2019]. A τ-synchronizing set of a string of length n is a set of O(n/τ) string positions, chosen using their length-2τ contexts, such that (outside of highly periodic regions) every block of τ consecutive positions contains at least one element of the set. Synchronizing sets have found dozens of applications in diverse settings, from quantum and dynamic algorithms to fully compressed computation. In the classic word RAM model, particularly for strings over small alphabets, they enabled faster solutions to core problems in data compression, text indexing, and string similarity. In this work, we show that any string T ∈ [0 .. σ)ⁿ can be preprocessed in O(n log σ / log n) time so that, for any given integer τ ∈ [1 .. n], a τ-synchronizing set of T can be constructed in O((n log τ)/(τ log n)) time. Both bounds are optimal in the word RAM model with machine word size w = Θ(log n), matching the information-theoretic minimum for the input and output sizes, respectively. Previously, constructing a τ-synchronizing set required O(n/τ) time after an O(n)-time preprocessing [Kociumaka, Radoszewski, Rytter, and Waleń; SICOMP 2024], or, in the restricted regime of τ < 0.2 log_σ n, without any preprocessing needed [Kempa & Kociumaka; STOC 2019]. A simple instantiation of our method outputs the synchronizing set as a sorted list in O(n/τ) time, or as a bitmask in O(n/log n) time. Our optimal construction produces a compact fully indexable dictionary, supporting select queries in O(1) time and rank queries in O(log ((log τ)/(log log n))) time. The latter complexity matches known unconditional cell-probe lower bounds for τ ≤ n^{1-Ω(1)}. To achieve this, we introduce a general framework for efficiently processing sparse integer sequences via a custom variable-length encoding. We also augment the optimal variant of van Emde Boas trees [Pătraşcu & Thorup; STOC 2006] with a deterministic linear-time construction. When the set is represented as a bitmask under our sparse encoding, the same guarantees for select and rank queries hold after preprocessing in time proportional to the size of our encoding (in words).
Cite as

Jonas Ellert and Tomasz Kociumaka. Time-Optimal Construction of String Synchronizing Sets. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 36:1-36:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{ellert_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.36,
  author =	{Ellert, Jonas and Kociumaka, Tomasz},
  title =	{{Time-Optimal Construction of String Synchronizing Sets}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{36:1--36:22},
  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.2026.36},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255258},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.36},
  annote =	{Keywords: synchronizing sets, local consistency, packed strings}
}
Document
Research
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.2
On the Construction of Elastic Degenerate Strings

Authors: Nicola Rizzo, Veli Mäkinen, and Nadia Pisanti

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

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

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

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{rizzo_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.2,
  author =	{Rizzo, Nicola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli and Pisanti, Nadia},
  title =	{{On the Construction of Elastic Degenerate Strings}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{2:1--2:13},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238014},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: multiple sequence alignment, pattern matching, data structures, segmentation algorithms, founder reconstruction, dynamic programming, semi-dynamic range minimum queries, positional Burrows-Wheeler transform}
}
Document
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}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2021.5
The k-Mappability Problem Revisited

Authors: Amihood Amir, Itai Boneh, and Eitan Kondratovsky

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 191, 32nd Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2021)

Abstract
The k-mappability problem has two integers parameters m and k. For every subword of size m in a text S, we wish to report the number of indices in S in which the word occurs with at most k mismatches. The problem was lately tackled by Alzamel et al. [Mai Alzamel et al., 2018]. For a text with constant alphabet Σ and k ∈ O(1), they present an algorithm with linear space and O(nlog^{k+1}n) time. For the case in which k = 1 and a constant size alphabet, a faster algorithm with linear space and O(nlog(n)log log(n)) time was presented in [Mai Alzamel et al., 2020]. In this work, we enhance the techniques of [Mai Alzamel et al., 2020] to obtain an algorithm with linear space and O(n log(n)) time for k = 1. Our algorithm removes the constraint of the alphabet being of constant size. We also present linear algorithms for the case of k = 1, |Σ| ∈ O(1) and m = Ω(√n).
Cite as

Amihood Amir, Itai Boneh, and Eitan Kondratovsky. The k-Mappability Problem Revisited. In 32nd Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 191, pp. 5:1-5:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{amir_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2021.5,
  author =	{Amir, Amihood and Boneh, Itai and Kondratovsky, Eitan},
  title =	{{The k-Mappability Problem Revisited}},
  booktitle =	{32nd Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2021)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-186-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{191},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Starikovskaya, Tatiana},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2021.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-139566},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2021.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pattern Matching, Hamming Distance, Suffix Tree, Suffix Array}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2020.2
Finding the Anticover of a String

Authors: Mai Alzamel, Alessio Conte, Shuhei Denzumi, Roberto Grossi, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Kazuhiro Kurita, and Kunihiro Wasa

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 161, 31st Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2020)

Abstract
A k-anticover of a string x is a set of pairwise distinct factors of x of equal length k, such that every symbol of x is contained into an occurrence of at least one of those factors. The existence of a k-anticover can be seen as a notion of non-redundancy, which has application in computational biology, where they are associated with various non-regulatory mechanisms. In this paper we address the complexity of the problem of finding a k-anticover of a string x if it exists, showing that the decision problem is NP-complete on general strings for k ≥ 3. We also show that the problem admits a polynomial-time solution for k=2. For unbounded k, we provide an exact exponential algorithm to find a k-anticover of a string of length n (or determine that none exists), which runs in O*(min {3^{(n-k)/3)}, ((k(k+1))/2)^{n/(k+1)) time using polynomial space.
Cite as

Mai Alzamel, Alessio Conte, Shuhei Denzumi, Roberto Grossi, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Kazuhiro Kurita, and Kunihiro Wasa. Finding the Anticover of a String. In 31st Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 161, pp. 2:1-2:11, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{alzamel_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2020.2,
  author =	{Alzamel, Mai and Conte, Alessio and Denzumi, Shuhei and Grossi, Roberto and Iliopoulos, Costas S. and Kurita, Kazuhiro and Wasa, Kunihiro},
  title =	{{Finding the Anticover of a String}},
  booktitle =	{31st Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2020)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:11},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-149-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{161},
  editor =	{G{\o}rtz, Inge Li and Weimann, Oren},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2020.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-121270},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2020.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Anticover, String algorithms, Stringology, NP-complete}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2019.25
Quasi-Linear-Time Algorithm for Longest Common Circular Factor

Authors: Mai Alzamel, Maxime Crochemore, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Tomasz Kociumaka, Jakub Radoszewski, Wojciech Rytter, Juliusz Straszyński, Tomasz Waleń, and Wiktor Zuba

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 128, 30th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2019)

Abstract
We introduce the Longest Common Circular Factor (LCCF) problem in which, given strings S and T of length at most n, we are to compute the longest factor of S whose cyclic shift occurs as a factor of T. It is a new similarity measure, an extension of the classic Longest Common Factor. We show how to solve the LCCF problem in O(n log^4 n) time using O(n log^2 n) space.
Cite as

Mai Alzamel, Maxime Crochemore, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Tomasz Kociumaka, Jakub Radoszewski, Wojciech Rytter, Juliusz Straszyński, Tomasz Waleń, and Wiktor Zuba. Quasi-Linear-Time Algorithm for Longest Common Circular Factor. In 30th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 128, pp. 25:1-25:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{alzamel_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2019.25,
  author =	{Alzamel, Mai and Crochemore, Maxime and Iliopoulos, Costas S. and Kociumaka, Tomasz and Radoszewski, Jakub and Rytter, Wojciech and Straszy\'{n}ski, Juliusz and Wale\'{n}, Tomasz and Zuba, Wiktor},
  title =	{{Quasi-Linear-Time Algorithm for Longest Common Circular Factor}},
  booktitle =	{30th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2019)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-103-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{128},
  editor =	{Pisanti, Nadia and P. Pissis, Solon},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2019.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-104961},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2019.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: longest common factor, circular pattern matching, internal pattern matching, intersection of hyperrectangles}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2018.21
Degenerate String Comparison and Applications

Authors: Mai Alzamel, Lorraine A. K. Ayad, Giulia Bernardini, Roberto Grossi, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Nadia Pisanti, Solon P. Pissis, and Giovanna Rosone

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 113, 18th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2018)

Abstract
A generalised degenerate string (GD string) S^ is a sequence of n sets of strings of total size N, where the ith set contains strings of the same length k_i but this length can vary between different sets. We denote the sum of these lengths k_0, k_1,...,k_{n-1} by W. This type of uncertain sequence can represent, for example, a gapless multiple sequence alignment of width W in a compact form. Our first result in this paper is an O(N+M)-time algorithm for deciding whether the intersection of two GD strings of total sizes N and M, respectively, over an integer alphabet, is non-empty. This result is based on a combinatorial result of independent interest: although the intersection of two GD strings can be exponential in the total size of the two strings, it can be represented in only linear space. A similar result can be obtained by employing an automata-based approach but its cost is alphabet-dependent. We then apply our string comparison algorithm to compute palindromes in GD strings. We present an O(min{W,n^2}N)-time algorithm for computing all palindromes in S^. Furthermore, we show a similar conditional lower bound for computing maximal palindromes in S^. Finally, proof-of-concept experimental results are presented using real protein datasets.
Cite as

Mai Alzamel, Lorraine A. K. Ayad, Giulia Bernardini, Roberto Grossi, Costas S. Iliopoulos, Nadia Pisanti, Solon P. Pissis, and Giovanna Rosone. Degenerate String Comparison and Applications. In 18th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 113, pp. 21:1-21:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{alzamel_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2018.21,
  author =	{Alzamel, Mai and Ayad, Lorraine A. K. and Bernardini, Giulia and Grossi, Roberto and Iliopoulos, Costas S. and Pisanti, Nadia and Pissis, Solon P. and Rosone, Giovanna},
  title =	{{Degenerate String Comparison and Applications}},
  booktitle =	{18th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2018)},
  pages =	{21:1--21:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-082-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{113},
  editor =	{Parida, Laxmi and Ukkonen, Esko},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2018.21},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-93236},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2018.21},
  annote =	{Keywords: degenerate strings, generalised degenerate strings, elastic-degenerate strings, string comparison, palindromes}
}
  • Refine by Type
  • 9 Document/PDF
  • 5 Document/HTML

  • Refine by Publication Year
  • 3 2026
  • 2 2025
  • 1 2021
  • 1 2020
  • 1 2019
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Author
  • 3 Alzamel, Mai
  • 3 Iliopoulos, Costas S.
  • 3 Pisanti, Nadia
  • 2 Grossi, Roberto
  • 2 Kociumaka, Tomasz
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Series/Journal
  • 7 LIPIcs
  • 2 OASIcs

  • Refine by Classification
  • 5 Theory of computation → Pattern matching
  • 2 Theory of computation → Sorting and searching
  • 1 Applied computing → Genomics
  • 1 Mathematics of computing → Combinatorics on words
  • 1 Theory of computation
  • Show More...

  • Refine by Keyword
  • 2 longest common factor
  • 1 Anticover
  • 1 Burrows-Wheeler transform
  • 1 Conditional Lower Bound
  • 1 Elastic-degenerate strings
  • 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