Computational Biology CB_Q0008

Title : Hurdles hardly have to be heeded
Author : Krister M. Swenson, Yu Lin, Vaibhav Rajan and Bernard M. E. Moret
Year Publish : 2008
Place of Publish : : Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
Abstract :

As data about genomic architecture accumulates, genomic rearrangements have attracted increasing attention. One of the main rearrangement mechanisms, inversions (also called reversals), was characterized by Hannenhalli and Pevzner and this characterization in turn extended by various authors. The characterization relies on the concepts of breakpoints, cycles, and obstructions colorfully named hurdles and fortresses. In this paper, we study the probability of generating a hurdle in the process of sorting a permutation if one does not take special precautions to avoid them (as in a randomized algorithm, for instance). To do this we revisit and extend the work of Caprara and of Bergeron by providing simple and exact characterizations of the probability of encountering a hurdle in a random permutation. Using similar methods we, for the first time, find an asymptotically tight analysis of the probability that a fortress exists in a random permutation.