A local algorithm for DNA sequence alignment with inversions.

Abstract

A dynamic programming algorithm to find all optimal alignments of DNA subsequences is described. The alignments use not only substitutions, insertions and deletions of nucleotides but also inversions (reversed complements) of substrings of the sequences. The inversion alignments themselves contain substitutions, insertions and deletions of nucleotides. We study the problem of alignment with non-intersecting inversions. To provide a computationally efficient algorithm we restrict candidate inversions to the K highest scoring inversions. An algorithm to find the J best non-intersecting alignments with inversions is also described. The new algorithm is applied to the regions of mitochondrial DNA of Drosophila yakuba and mouse coding for URF6 and cytochrome b and the inversion of the URF6 gene is found. The open problem of intersecting inversions is discussed.