Monte-Carlo Tree Search for the Multiple Sequence Alignment Problem

The paper considers solving the multiple sequence alignment, a combinatorial challenge in computational biology, where several DNA RNA, or protein sequences are to be arranged for high similarity. The proposal applies randomized Monte-Carlo tree search with nested rollouts and is able to improve the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the International Symposium on Combinatorial Search Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 9 - 17
Main Authors Edelkamp, Stefan, Tang, Zhihao
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.09.2021
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN2832-9171
2832-9163
2832-9163
DOI10.1609/socs.v6i1.18359

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Summary:The paper considers solving the multiple sequence alignment, a combinatorial challenge in computational biology, where several DNA RNA, or protein sequences are to be arranged for high similarity. The proposal applies randomized Monte-Carlo tree search with nested rollouts and is able to improve the solution quality over time. Instead of learning the position of the letters, the approach learns a policy for the position of the gaps. The Monte-Carlo beam search algorithm we have implemented has a low memory overhead and can be invoked with constructed or known initial solutions. Experiments in the BAliBASE benchmark show promising results in improving state-of-the-art alignments.
ISSN:2832-9171
2832-9163
2832-9163
DOI:10.1609/socs.v6i1.18359