Question

Unlike the commonly used methods for aligning a pair of sequences, the Bayesian method _______ using a particular scoring matrix or designated gap penalties.

(a) does not depend on

(b) depends on

(c) is based on

(d) involves

I had been asked this question in an online quiz.

This interesting question is from Bayesian Statistics in portion Sequence Alignment of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct answer is (a) does not depend on

For explanation: Because it doesn’t depend on the mentioned techniques, there is no need to choose a particular scoring system or gap penalty. Instead, a number of different scoring matrices and range of block numbers up to some reasonable maximum are examined, and the most probable alignments are determined. The Bayesian method provides a distribution of alignments weighted according to probability and can also provide an estimate of the evolutionary distance between the sequences that is independent of scoring matrix and gaps.