The minimum evolution problem is hard:A link between tree inference and graph clustering problems

Bastkowski, Sarah, Moulton, Vincent, Spillner, Andreas and Wu, Taoyang (2016) The minimum evolution problem is hard:A link between tree inference and graph clustering problems. Bioinformatics, 32 (4). pp. 518-522. ISSN 1367-4803

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Abstract

Motivation: Distance methods are well suited for constructing massive phylogenetic trees. However, the computational complexity for Rzhetsky and Nei’s minimum evolution (ME) approach, one of the earliest methods for constructing a phylogenetic tree from a distance matrix, remains open. Results: We show that Rzhetsky and Nei’s ME problem is NP-complete, and so probably computationally intractable. We do this by linking the ME problem to a graph clustering problem called the quasi-clique decomposition problem, which has recently also been shown to be NP-complete. We also discuss how this link could potentially open up some useful new connections between phylogenetics and graph clustering.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science Faculty of Science > School of Computing Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Computational Biology Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Data Science and AI
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	03 Nov 2015 11:00
Last Modified:	28 Mar 2025 06:52
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54982
DOI:	10.1093/bioinformatics/btv623

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