The ADAGIo group of LORIA is born in January 2006 in the scope of a recombination of former Adage and Modbio teams, with discrete algorithms as main work theme. The general goal is to develop efficient algorithms on discrete structures, such as strings, trees, graphs, maps, polyominoes, etc. This development comes through deep theoretical studies of combinatorial properties of those structures. Our distinguished application areas are discrete geometry and bioinformatics, in which discrete models play a crucial role. A particular attention is drawn to creating experimental software implementing algorithms we develop.
Discrete geometry is concerned with the study of discrete objects having a geometric (planar or spatial) interpretation. Our approach to discrete geometry can be defined as combinatorial, as it consists in binding together properties of discrete objects and integers, in close connexion with their combinatorial structures. In this direction, interesting results have been established about various objects such that polyominoes, straight lines, and discrete planes. These results gave rise to new algorithms on discrete geometrical objects, both in dimension 2 and 3.
Bioinformatics is for us both a source of problems
to study and an important area of applying our methods and
algorithms. Among numerous situations where discrete algorithms come
up in genomic studies, we are especially interested in sequence
analysis. Particular topics of interest are tandem repeats in DNA
sequences, patterns in protein sequences, patterns in DNA/RNA
sequences specifying regulatory and expression sites.
Since the departure of the more involved fellows in this activity
domain, this topic is currently in standby.