Genome aliquoting with double cut and join

BACKGROUND: The genome aliquoting problem is, given an observed genome A with n copies of each gene, presumed to descend from an n-way polyploidization event from an ordinary diploid genome B, followed by a history of chromosomal rearrangements, to reconstruct the identity of the original genome B'. The idea is to construct B', containing exactly one copy of each gene, so as to minimize the number of rearrangements d(A, B' plus sign in circle B' plus sign in circle ... plus sign in circle B') necessary to convert the observed genome B' plus sign in circle B' plus sign in circle ... plus sign in circle B' into A. RESULTS: In this paper we make the first attempt to define and solve the genome aliquoting problem. We present a heuristic algorithm for the problem as well the data from our experiments demonstrating its validity. CONCLUSION: The heuristic performs well, consistently giving a non-trivial result. The question as to the existence or non-existence of an exact solution to this problem remains open.