Global alignment of molecular sequences via ancestral state reconstruction

Abstract

We consider the trace reconstruction problem on a tree (TRPT): a binary sequence is broadcast through a tree channel where we allow substitutions, deletions, and insertions; we seek to reconstruct the original sequence from the sequences received at the leaves. The TRPT is motivated by the multiple sequence alignment problem in computational biology. We give a simple recursive procedure giving strong reconstruction guarantees at low mutation rates. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous trace reconstruction result on a tree in the presence of indels.