Recent Advances in Computation and Combinatorial Optimization

Abstract

This special issue contains six papers selected from 172 submissions to the Fourteenth Annual International Conference on Combinatorics and Computation (COCOON 2008), held in Dalian, China, June 2008. These papers highlight some of the current research interests and achievements in the area of theoretical computer science, ranging from practical exact algorithms for studying complex genetic diseases to improved exact algorithms for classic problems of enumerating cuts, from low-rank matrix factorization and its applications to approximation algorithms for the selected-internal Steiner minimum trees, and from resource bounded frequency computations to quantum separation of local search and fixed point computation. J. Wang, M. Xie, and J. Chen’s paper presents a practical and exact algorithm for studying the individual haplotyping problem on the computational model of Minimum Error Correction with Genotype Information (MEC/GI). Human haplotypes are believed to hold the keys to reveal the mysteries of complex genetic diseases. Computational methods have been explored to tackle challenging issues in the study of human haplotypes. In particular, MEC/GI is a computational model that can be used to infer a pair of haplotypes compatible with the genotype by correcting minimum number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the given DNA fragments. The authors develop a dynamic programming algorithm to solve the problem with running time of O(mk2k+m logm+mk), where m is the number of DNA fragments