How do we find distant biological relatives using computational algorithms?
In short: This lecture explores the computational methods used to compare biopolymer sequences. It highlights dynamic programming as a primary tool for identifying relationships between highly divergent DNA sequences.
The lecture, part of the 2002 MIT course HST.508 Genomics and Computational Biology, focuses on the challenge of aligning and comparing DNA sequences that share distant evolutionary links. Instructor George Church introduces the core algorithms essential for this task, with dynamic programming serving as the central technique.
Beyond dynamic programming, the session covers BLAST, multiple sequence alignment, and hidden Markov models. These computational approaches allow researchers to navigate the complexity of genomic data to uncover structural and functional similarities that are not immediately apparent.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: 4A. DNA 2: Dynamic Programming, Blast, Multi-alignment, Hidden Markov Models
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