Question

The branch-and-bound method starts building trees in a similar way as in the exhaustive method.

(a) True

(b) False

This question was posed to me by my school teacher while I was bunking the class.

I'm obligated to ask this question of Character Based Methods topic in section Phylogenetic Tree Construction Methods and Programs of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct answer is (a) True

The best I can explain: The difference is that the previously established upper bound limits the tree growth. Whenever the overall tree length at every single stage exceeds the upper bound, the topology search toward a particular direction aborts. By doing so, it dramatically reduces the number of trees considered hence the computing time while at the same time guaranteeing to find the most parsimonious tree.