Fast Computation of the Exact Hybridization Number of Two Phylogenetic Trees

Abstract. Hybridization is a reticulate evolutionary process. An established problem on hybridization is computing the minimum number of hybridization events, called the hybridization number, needed in the evolutionary history of two phylogenetic trees. This problem is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we present a new practical method to compute the exact hybridization number. Our approach is based on an integer linear programming formulation. Simulation results on biological and simulated datasets show that our method (as implemented in program SPRDist) is more efficient and robust than an existing method.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ISBRA
• Authors: Yufeng Wu, Jiayin Wang
• Keywords: Bioinformatics, Exact Hybridization Number, Hybridization Events, Hybridization Number, ISBRA 2010