A branch-price-and-cut algorithm for the minimum evolution problem

Daniele Catanzaro, Roberto Aringhieri, Marco Di Summa and Raffaele Pesenti ()

European Journal of Operational Research, 2015, vol. 244, issue 3, 753-765

Abstract: We investigate the Minimum Evolution Problem (MEP), an NP-hard network design problem arising from computational biology. The MEP consists in finding a weighted unrooted binary tree having n leaves, minimal length, and such that the sum of the edge weights belonging to the unique path between each pair of leaves is greater than or equal to a prescribed value. We study the polyhedral combinatorics of the MEP and investigate its relationships with the Balanced Minimum Evolution Problem. We develop an exact solution approach for the MEP based on a nontrivial combination of a parallel branch-price-and-cut scheme and a non-isomorphic enumeration of all possible solutions to the problem. Computational experiments show that the new solution approach outperforms the best mixed integer linear programming formulation for the MEP currently described in the literature. Our results give a perspective on the combinatorics of the MEP and suggest new directions for the development of future exact solution approaches that may turn out useful in practical applications. We also show that the MEP is statistically consistent.

Keywords: Combinatorial inequalities; Branch-price-and-cut; Symmetry breaking; Tree isomorphism; Computational biology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221715001204
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: A branch-price-and-cut algorithm for the minimum evolution problem (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:244:y:2015:i:3:p:753-765

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.02.019

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().