Location of repetitive regions in sequences by optimizing a compression method.

Suppose that a biologist wishes to study some local property P of genetic sequences. If he can design (with a computer scientist) an algorithm C which efficiently compresses parts of the sequence which satisfy P, then our algorithm TurboOptLift locates very quickly where property P occurs by chance on a sequence, and where it occurs as a result of a significant process. Under some conditions, the time complexity of TurboOptLift is O(n log n). We illustrate its use on the practical problem of locating approximate tandem repeats in DNA sequences.