Chaining with overlaps revisited

Abstract: Chaining algorithms aim to form a semi-global alignment of two sequences based on a set of anchoring local alignments as input. Depending on the optimization criteria and the exact definition of a chain, there are several $O(n \log n)$ time algorithms to solve this problem optimally, where $n$ is the number of input anchors. In this paper, we focus on a formulation allowing the anchors to overlap in a chain. This formulation was studied by Shibuya and Kurochin (WABI 2003), but their algorithm comes with no proof of correctness. We revisit and modify their algorithm to consider a strict definition of precedence relation on anchors, adding the required derivation to convince on the correctness of the resulting algorithm that runs in $O(n \log^2 n)$ time on anchors formed by exact matches. With the more relaxed definition of precedence relation considered by Shibuya and Kurochin or when anchors are non-nested such as matches of uniform length ($k$-mers), the algorithm takes $O(n \log n)$ time. We also establish a connection between chaining with overlaps to the widely studied longest common subsequence (LCS) problem.