On the complexity of deriving position specific score matrices from positive and negative sequences

Abstract

Position-specific score matrices (PSSMs) have been applied to various problems in computational molecular biology. In this paper, we study the following problem: given positive examples (sequences) and negative examples (sequences), find a PSSM which correctly discriminates between positive and negative examples. We prove that this problem is solved in polynomial time if the size of a PSSM is bounded by a constant. On the other hand, we prove that this problem is NP-hard if the size is not bounded. We also prove hardness results for deriving multiple PSSMs and related problems.