The steiner problem in phylogeny is NP-complete

Abstract

The problem of determining a phylogeny (evolutionary tree) for a given set of species using protein sequences is introduced and defined as the Steiner problem in phylogeny (SPP). In this note we show that the SPP is NP-complete, even when restricted to the special case of just two amino acid triples (in which case the SPP is the ordinary Steiner problem in {0, 1}n). This reinforces the recent emphasis on the development of heuristic techniques for the problem. © 1982 Academic Press, Inc. All rights reserved.