An Efficient Ant Colony Algorithm for Multiple Sequences Alignment

A multiple sequence alignment algorithm based on divide-and-conquer method and ant colony algorithms is proposed. In the algorithm, ant colony optimization method is used to partition the set of sequences into several subsections vertically. Then the procedure of partitioning is applied to the prefix family and the suffix family in a recursive manner until the lengths of the subsequences are all equal to 1. Experimental results show that the algorithm can get high quality solution and reduce the running time.