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2007

Computing the minimum number of hybridization events for a consistent evolutionary history

13 years 10 months ago
Computing the minimum number of hybridization events for a consistent evolutionary history
It is now well-documented that the structure of evolutionary relationships between a set of present-day species is not necessarily tree-like. The reason for this is that reticulation events such as hybridizations mean that species are a mixture of genes from different ancestors. Since such events are relatively rare, a fundamental problem for biologists is to determine the smallest number of hybridization events required to explain a given (input) set of data in a single (hybrid) phylogeny. The main results of this paper show that computing this smallest number is APX-hard, and thus NP-hard, in the case the input is a collection of phylogenetic trees on sets of present-day species. This answers a problem which was raised at a recent conference (Phylogenetic Combinatorics and Applications, Uppsala University, 2004).As a consequence of these results, we also correct a previously published NP-hardness proof in the case the input is a collection of binary sequences, where each sequence re...
Magnus Bordewich, Charles Semple
Added 13 Dec 2010
Updated 13 Dec 2010
Type Journal
Year 2007
Where DAM
Authors Magnus Bordewich, Charles Semple
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