Employing A* Algorithm in Parallel Multiple Protein Sequence Alignment

Yasushi Totoki(1), Yutaka Akiyama(2), Kentaro Onizuka(2),
Tamotsu Noguchi(2), Minoru Saito(2), Makoto Ando(2)

As a new strategy for multiple sequence alignment, we employed an iterative scheme with best-first search, and parallelized its search step using PVM library. Furthermore we implemented the A* pruning algorithm instead of dynamic programming, to drastically reduce the search space. As a result, our new parallel system enables biologically accurate multiple sequence alignment performed within reasonable time.


(1) Information and Mathematical Science Laboratory, Inc. (2) Real World Computing Partnership