Bayesian Sequence Alignment

Bayesian sequence alignment treats the alignment of biological sequences (DNA, RNA, or protein) as a probabilistic inference problem rather than a deterministic optimization. Instead of returning a single best alignment, it samples from a posterior distribution over all plausible alignments given a substitution model and gap penalty priors, thereby quantifying alignment uncertainty. It is particularly valuable when downstream analyses such as phylogenetic inference or functional annotation are sensitive to alignment error.