Figure 2.

Example of Tour Bus error correction. (A) Original graph. (B) The search starts from A and spreads toward the right. The progression of the top path (through B′ and C′) is stopped because D was previously visited. The nucleotide sequences corresponding to the alternate paths B′C′ and BC are extracted from the graph, aligned, and compared. (C) The two paths are judged similar, so the longer one, B′C′, is merged into the shorter one, BC. The merging is directed by the alignment of the consensus sequences, indicated in red lines in B. Note that node X, which was connected to node B′, is now connected to node B. The search progresses, and the bottom path (through C′ and D′) arrives second in E. Once again, the corresponding paths, C′D′ and CD are compared. (D) CD and C′D′ are judged similar enough. The longer path is merged into the shorter one.