Maximum Covering Subtrees for Phylogenetic Networks

IEEE/ACM Trans Comput Biol Bioinform. 2021 Nov-Dec;18(6):2823-2827. doi: 10.1109/TCBB.2020.3040910. Epub 2021 Dec 8.

Abstract

Tree-based phylogenetic networks, which may be roughly defined as leaf-labeled networks built by adding arcs only between the original tree edges, have elegant properties for modeling evolutionary histories. We answer an open question of Francis, Semple, and Steel about the complexity of determining how far a phylogenetic network is from being tree-based, including non-binary phylogenetic networks. We show that finding a phylogenetic tree covering the maximum number of nodes in a phylogenetic network can be computed in polynomial time via an encoding into a minimum-cost flow problem.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Evolution, Molecular*
  • Models, Genetic
  • Phylogeny*