On Suboptimal LCS-alignments for Independent Bernoulli Sequences with Asymmetric Distributions

Let X = X ₁ ... X _n and Y = Y ₁ ... Y _n be two binary sequences with length n. A common subsequence of X and Y is any subsequence of X that at the same time is a subsequence of Y; The common subsequence with maximal length is called the longest common subsequence (LCS) of X and Y. LCS is a common tool for measuring the closeness of X and Y. In this note, we consider the case when X and Y are both i.i.d. Bernoulli sequences with the parameters ϵ and 1 − ϵ, respectively. Hence, typically the sequences consist of large and short blocks of different colors. This gives an idea to the so-called block-by-block alignment, where the short blocks in one sequence are matched to the long blocks of the same color in another sequence. Such and alignment is not necessarily a LCS, but it is computationally easy to obtain and, therefore, of practical interest. We investigate the asymptotical properties of several block-by-block type of alignments. The paper ends with the simulation study, where the of block-by-block type of alignments are compared with the LCS.