An improved algorithm for sorting by block-interchanges based on permutation groups

Given a chromosome represented by a permutation of genes, a block-interchanges is proposed as a generalized transposition that affects a chromosome by swapping two nonintersecting segments of genes. The problem of sorting by block-interchanges is to find a minimum series of block-interchanges for transforming one chromosome into another. In this paper, we present an O(n+ δ log n) time algorithm for solving the problem of sorting by block-interchanges, which improves a previous algorithm of O(δn) time proposed by Lin et al. [12], where n is the number of genes and δ is the minimum number of blockinterchanges required for the transformation.