Multiple sequence alignment using partial order graphs

Motivation: Progressive Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) methods depend on reducing an MSA to a linear profile for each alignment step. However, this leads to loss of information needed for accurate alignment, and gap scoring artifacts. Results: We present a graph representation of an MSA that can itself be aligned directly by pairwise dynamic programming, eliminating the need to reduce the MSA to a profile. This enables our algorithm (Partial...