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Additive Approximation for Near-Perfect Phylogeny Construction

We study the problem of constructing phylogenetic trees for a given set of species. The problem is formulated as that of finding a minimum Steiner tree on $n$ points over the Boolean hypercube of dimension $d$. It is known that an optimal tree can be found in linear time if the given dataset has a perfect phylogeny, i.e. cost of the optimal phylogeny is exactly $d$. Moreover, if the data has a near-perfect phylogeny, i.e. the cost of the optimal Steiner tree is $d+q$, it is known that an exact solution can be found in running time which is polynomial in the number of species and $d$, yet exponential in $q$. In this work, we give a polynomial-time algorithm (in both $d$ and $q$) that finds a phylogenetic tree of cost $d+O(q^2)$. This provides the best guarantees known - namely, a $(1+o(1))$-approximation - for the case $\log(d) \ll q \ll \sqrt{d}$, broadening the range of settings for which near-optimal solutions can be efficiently found. We also discuss the motivation and reasoning for studying such additive approximations.