Genome assembly using quantum and quantum-inspired annealing

Abstract: Recent advances in DNA sequencing open prospects to make whole-genome analysis rapid and reliable, which is promising for various applications including personalized medicine. However, existing techniques for {\it de novo} genome assembly, which is used for the analysis of genomic rearrangements, chromosome phasing, and reconstructing genomes without a reference, require solving tasks of high computational complexity. Here we demonstrate a method for solving genome assembly tasks with the use of quantum and quantum-inspired optimization techniques. Within this method, we present experimental results on genome assembly using quantum annealers both for simulated data and the $\phi$X 174 bacteriophage. Our results pave a way for an increase in the efficiency of solving bioinformatics problems with the use of quantum computing and, in particular, quantum annealing. We expect that the new generation of quantum annealing devices would outperform existing techniques for {\it de novo} genome assembly. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental study of de novo genome assembly problems both for real and synthetic data on quantum annealing devices and quantum-inspired techniques.