English

A Simple Characterization of the Minimal Obstruction Sets for Three-State Perfect Phylogenies

Data Structures and Algorithms 2011-06-07 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Lam, Gusfield, and Sridhar (2009) showed that a set of three-state characters has a perfect phylogeny if and only if every subset of three characters has a perfect phylogeny. They also gave a complete characterization of the sets of three three-state characters that do not have a perfect phylogeny. However, it is not clear from their characterization how to find a subset of three characters that does not have a perfect phylogeny without testing all triples of characters. In this note, we build upon their result by giving a simple characterization of when a set of three-state characters does not have a perfect phylogeny that can be inferred from testing all pairs of characters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1106.0874,
  title  = {A Simple Characterization of the Minimal Obstruction Sets for Three-State Perfect Phylogenies},
  author = {Brad Shutters and David Fernández-Baca},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.0874},
  year   = {2011}
}