Intro to Computational Biology
Edit distance is a measure of the minimum number of operations required to transform one string into another, where the allowed operations typically include insertion, deletion, and substitution of characters. This concept is crucial for evaluating how similar two strings are, making it a key component in string matching algorithms and the calculation of similarity scores in biological sequences. Understanding edit distance helps in optimizing sequence alignment by determining appropriate gap penalties when aligning sequences with mismatches or missing segments.
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