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Overlaps between words are crucial in many areas of computer science, such as code design, stringology, and bioinformatics. A self overlapping word is characterized by its periods and borders. A period of a word $u$ is the starting position of a suffix of $u$ that is also a prefix $u$, and such a suffix is called a border. Each word of length, say $n>0$, has a set of periods, but not all combinations of integers are sets of periods. Computing the period set of a word $u$ takes linear time in the length of $u$. We address the question of computing, the set, denoted $\Gamma_n$, of all period sets of words of length $n$. Although period sets have been characterized, there is no formula to compute the cardinality of $\Gamma_n$ (which is exponential in $n$), and the known dynamic programming algorithm to enumerate $\Gamma_n$ suffers from its space complexity. We present an incremental approach to compute $\Gamma_n$ from $\Gamma_{n-1}$, which reduces the space complexity, and then a constructive certification algorithm useful for verification purposes. The incremental approach defines a parental relation between sets in $\Gamma_{n-1}$ and $\Gamma_n$, enabling one to investigate the dynamics of period sets, and their intriguing statistical properties. Moreover, the period set of a word $u$ is the key for computing the absence probability of $u$ in random texts. Thus, knowing $\Gamma_n$ is useful to assess the significance of word statistics, such as the number of missing words in a random text., Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, 5 algorithms, 27 references, 1 related resource on Zenodo, 6 appendices; accepted for publication at 50th conference SOFSEM 2025

A correlation is a binary vector that encodes all possible positions of overlaps of two words, where an overlap for an ordered pair of words (u,v) occurs if a suffix of word u matches a prefix of word v. As multiple pairs can have the same correlation, it is relevant to count how many pairs of words share the same correlation depending on the alphabet size and word length n. We exhibit recurrences to compute the number of such pairs -- which is termed population size -- for any correlation; for this, we exploit a relationship between overlaps of two words and self-overlap of one word. This theorem allows us to compute the number of pairs with a longest overlap of a given length and to show that the expected length of the longest border of two words asymptotically diverges, which solves two open questions raised by Gabric in 2022. Finally, we also provide bounds for the asymptotic of the population ratio of any correlation. Given the importance of word overlaps in areas like word combinatorics, bioinformatics, and digital communication, our results may ease analyses of algorithms for string processing, code design, or genome assembly., Comment: - HAL: lirmm-04576588v2 - https://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-04576588v2 - 20 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, appendix A, B, C - Mots cl\'es: corr\'elation, chevauchement, bordure, combinatoire, limites, esp\'erance, population, algorithmique, treillis - Keywords: correlation, overlap, border, counting, bounds, expectation, Asymptotics, limits, population, stringology, lattice

Phylogenetically informed k-mers, or phylo-k-mers for short, are k-mers that are predicted to appear within a given genomic region at predefined locations of a fixed phylogeny. Given a reference alignment for this genomic region and assuming a phylogenetic model of sequence evolution, we can compute a probability score for any given k-mer at any given tree node. The k-mers with sufficiently high probabilities can later be used to perform alignment-free phylogenetic classification of new sequences-a procedure recently proposed for the phylogenetic placement of metabarcoding reads and the detection of novel virus recombinants. While computing phylo-k-mers, we need to consider large numbers of k-mers at each tree node, which warrants the development of efficient enumeration algorithms. We consider a formal definition of the problem of phylo-k-mer computation: How to efficiently find all k-mers whose probability lies above a user-defined threshold for a given tree node? We describe and analyze algorithms for this problem, relying on branch-and-bound and divideand-conquer techniques. We exploit the redundancy of adjacent windows of the alignment and the structure of the probability matrix to save on computation. Besides computational complexity analyses, we provide an empirical evaluation of the relative performance of their implementations on real-world and simulated data. The divide-and-conquer algorithms, which to the best of our knowledge are novel, are found to be clear improvements over the branch-and-bound approach, especially when a large number of phylo-k-mers are found.

Consider words of length $n$. The set of all periods of a word of length $n$ is a subset of $\{0,1,2,\ldots,n-1\}$. However, any subset of $\{0,1,2,\ldots,n-1\}$ is not necessarily a valid set of periods. In a seminal paper in 1981, Guibas and Odlyzko have proposed to encode the set of periods of a word into an $n$ long binary string, called an autocorrelation, where a one at position $i$ denotes the period $i$. They considered the question of recognizing a valid period set, and also studied the number of valid period sets for length $n$, denoted $\kappa_n$. They conjectured that $\ln(\kappa_n)$ asymptotically converges to a constant times $\ln^2(n)$. If improved lower bounds for $\ln(\kappa_n)/\ln^2(n)$ were proposed in 2001, the question of a tight upper bound has remained opened since Guibas and Odlyzko's paper. Here, we exhibit an upper bound for this fraction, which implies its convergence and closes this long standing conjecture. Moreover, we extend our result to find similar bounds for the number of correlations: a generalization of autocorrelations which encodes the overlaps between two strings., Comment: To appear on the proceedings of ICALP 2023 Version 3: 15 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 21 bibliographic references; ICALP 2023 final version; updated related works and bibliographic references; updated Figure 1; typos corrected. version 2: 14 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 12 bibliographic references; version 2: added a Related works section with additional references

Gene expression consists in the synthesis of proteins from the information encoded on DNA. One of the two main steps of gene expression is the translation of messenger RNA (mRNA) into polypeptide sequences of amino acids. Here, by taking into account mRNA degradation, we model the motion of ribosomes along mRNA with a ballistic model where particles advance along a filament without excluded volume interactions. Unidirectional models of transport have previously been used to fit the average density of ribosomes obtained by the experimental ribo-sequencing (Ribo-seq) technique. In this case an inverse fit gives access to the kinetic rates: the position-dependent speeds and the entry rate of ribosomes onto mRNA. The degradation rate is not, however, accounted for and experimental data from different experiments are needed to have enough parameters for the fit. Here, we propose an entirely novel experimental setup and theoretical framework consisting in splitting the mRNAs into categories depending on the number of ribosomes from one to four. We solve analytically the ballistic model for a fixed number of ribosomes per mRNA, study the different regimes of degradation, and propose a criteria for the quality of the inverse fit. The proposed method provides a high sensitivity to the mRNA degradation rate. The additional equations coming from using the monosome (single ribosome) and polysome (arbitrary number) ribo-seq profiles enable us to determine all the kinetic rates in terms of the experimentally accessible mRNA degradation rate., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables

The hierarchical overlap graph (HOG) is a graph that encodes overlaps from a given set P of n strings, as the overlap graph does. A best known algorithm constructs HOG in O(||P|| log n) time and O(||P||) space, where ||P|| is the sum of lengths of the strings in P. In this paper we present a new algorithm to construct HOG in O(||P||) time and space. Hence, the construction time and space of HOG are better than those of the overlap graph, which are O(||P|| + n^2)., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to CPM 2021

A superstring of a set of strings correspond to a string which contains all the other strings as substrings. The problem of finding the Shortest Linear Superstring is a well-know and well-studied problem in stringology. We present here a variant of this problem, the Shortest Circular Superstring problem where the sought superstring is a circular string. We show a strong link between these two problems and prove that the Shortest Circular Superstring problem is NP-complete. Moreover, we propose a new conjecture on the approximation ratio of the Shortest Circular Superstring problem.

The boom of genomic sequencing makes compression of set of sequences inescapable. This underlies the need for multi-string indexing data structures that helps compressing the data. The most prominent example of such data structures is the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT), a reversible permutation of a text that improves its compressibility. A similar data structure, the eXtended Burrows-Wheeler Transform (XBW), is able to index a tree labelled with alphabet symbols. A link between a multi-string BWT and the Aho-Corasick automaton has already been found and led to a way to build a XBW from a multi-string BWT. We exhibit a stronger link between a multi-string BWT and a XBW by using the order of the concatenation in the multi-string. This bijective link has several applications: first, it allows to build one data structure from the other; second, it enables one to compute an ordering of the input strings that optimises a Run-Length measure (i.e., the compressibility) of the BWT or of the XBW.

Given a set of finite words, the Overlap Graph (OG) is a complete weighted digraph where each word is a node and where the weight of an arc equals the length of the longest overlap of one word onto the other (Overlap is an asymmetric notion). The OG serves to assemble DNA fragments or to compute shortest superstrings which are a compressed representation of the input. The OG requires a space is quadratic in the number of words, which limits its scalability. The Hierarchical Overlap Graph (HOG) is an alternative graph that also encodes all maximal overlaps, but uses a space that is linear in the sum of the lengths of the input words. We propose the first algorithm to build the HOG in linear space for words of equal length., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, appendix, 6 graphics, 2 algorithms, 13 references

For analysing text algorithms, for computing superstrings, or for testing random number generators, one needs to compute all overlaps between any pairs of words in a given set. The positions of overlaps of a word onto itself, or of two words, are needed to compute the absence probability of a word in a random text, or the numbers of common words shared by two random texts. In all these contexts, one needs to compute or to query overlaps between pairs of words in a given set. For this sake, we designed COvI, a compressed overlap index that supports multiple queries on overlaps: like computing the correlation of two words, or listing pairs of words whose longest overlap is maximal among all possible pairs. COvI stores overlaps in a hierarchical and non-redundant manner. We propose an implementation that can handle datasets of millions of words and still answer queries efficiently. Comparison with a baseline solution - called FullAC - relying on the Aho-Corasick automaton shows that COvI provides significant advantages. For similar construction times, COvI requires half the memory FullAC, and still solves complex queries much faster.

New long read sequencing technologies, like PacBio SMRT and Oxford NanoPore, can produce sequencing reads up to 50,000 bp long but with an error rate of at least 15%. Reducing the error rate is necessary for subsequent utilisation of the reads in, e.g., de novo genome assembly. The error correction problem has been tackled either by aligning the long reads against each other or by a hybrid approach that uses the more accurate short reads produced by second generation sequencing technologies to correct the long reads. We present an error correction method that uses long reads only. The method consists of two phases: first we use an iterative alignment-free correction method based on de Bruijn graphs with increasing length of k-mers, and second, the corrected reads are further polished using long-distance dependencies that are found using multiple alignments. According to our experiments the proposed method is the most accurate one relying on long reads only for read sets with high coverage. Furthermore, when the coverage of the read set is at least 75x, the throughput of the new method is at least 20% higher. LoRMA is freely available at http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/lmsalmel/LoRMA/., Comment: paper accepted at the RECOMB-Seq 2016

Background Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has dramatically enhanced our ability to sequence genomes, but not to assemble them. In practice, many published genome sequences remain in the state of a large set of contigs. Each contig describes the sequence found along some path of the assembly graph, however, the set of contigs does not record all the sequence information contained in that graph. Although many subsequent analyses can be performed with the set of contigs, one may ask whether mapping reads on the contigs is as informative as mapping them on the paths of the assembly graph. Currently, one lacks practical tools to perform mapping on such graphs. Results Here, we propose a formal definition of mapping on a de Bruijn graph, analyse the problem complexity which turns out to be NP-complete, and provide a practical solution.We propose a pipeline called GGMAP (Greedy Graph MAPping). Its novelty is a procedure to map reads on branching paths of the graph, for which we designed a heuristic algorithm called BGREAT (de Bruijn Graph REAd mapping Tool). For the sake of efficiency, BGREAT rewrites a read sequence as a succession of unitigs sequences. GGMAP can map millions of reads per CPU hour on a de Bruijn graph built from a large set of human genomic reads. Surprisingly, results show that up to 22% more reads can be mapped on the graph but not on the contig set. Conclusions Although mapping reads on a de Bruijn graph is complex task, our proposal offers a practical solution combining efficiency with an improved mapping capacity compared to assembly-based mapping even for complex eukaryotic data. Availability: github.com/Malfoy/BGREAT Keywords: Read mapping; De bruijn graphs; NGS; NP-completeness, Comment: BMC Bioinformatics