Parallel protein multiple sequence alignment approaches: a systematic literature review.

Multiple sequence alignment approaches refer to algorithmic solutions for the alignment of biological sequences. Since multiple sequence alignment has exponential time complexity when a dynamic programming approach is applied, a substantial number of parallel computing approaches have been implemented in the last two decades to improve their performance. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of parallel computing approaches applied to multiple sequence alignment algorithms for proteins, published in the open literature from 1988 to 2022; we extracted articles from four scientific databases: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct and SpringerLink, and four journals: Bioinformatics, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS ONE, and Scientific Reports. Additionally, in order to cover other potential databases and journals, we performed a transversal search through Google Scholar. We conducted a selection process that yielded 106 research articles; then, we analyzed these articles and defined a classification framework. Additionally, we point out some directions and trends for parallel computing approaches for multiple sequence alignment, as well as some unsolved problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]