Question

In molecular biology, DNAs and proteins can be represented as a sequence of alphabets. DNA sequences consist of A, T, G, C representing nucleobases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Two sample DNA sequences GACGGATTAG and GATCGGAATAG. You are given two sequences query sequence and database sequence. You need to find the similarity between them. Similarity between sequences is the longest matching subsequence. This problem is similar to which of the problems from the explorations?

1) Knapsack
2) N-Queens
3) Longest Common Subsequence
4) Change Making Problem

Answer 1

Comparing DNA sequences to find the longest matching subsequence is analogous to the 'Longest Common Subsequence' problem. This is executed via sequence alignment, using tools such as BLAST to match sequences against the GenBank database.

Step-by-step explanation:

In molecular biology, when comparing the similarity between two DNA sequences, such as 'GACGGATTAG' and 'GATCGGAATAG,' we look for the longest matching subsequence. This approach is termed sequence alignment, and the specific computational problem it resembles is the Longest Common Subsequence. The goal of sequence alignment is to identify regions of similarity that may indicate a conservation of function or evolutionary relationships. Powerful tools like BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) facilitate this process by rapidly comparing sequences against vast databases like GenBank. Comparing sequences can reveal insights into genetic functions, evolutionary distances, and can even confirm or reshape phylogenetic trees. While BLAST performs local alignment, focusing on particular areas of high similarity, global alignment methods try to maximize the similarity across the entire sequence length, which can be instrumental in uncovering broader evolutionary patterns.