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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1983 Mar;80(5):1382–1386. doi: 10.1073/pnas.80.5.1382

Optimal sequence alignments

Walter M Fitch *, Temple F Smith
PMCID: PMC393601  PMID: 16593289

Abstract

Current theory is adequate to the task of finding an optimal alignment between two character strings such as nucleic acids. Most algorithms currently in use must fail to find the homologous alignment between a set of codons for the chicken α- and β-hemoglobin sequence when it is in fact discoverable by a more general treatment of gaps. Fundamental reasons for this are discussed.

Keywords: chicken hemoglobin; homology-analogy; distance similarity; gap weighting; Sellers, Needleman-Wunsch algorithms

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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