Past exam of the mathematical and Computational Biology course of the University of Cambridge / 2025 / Paper 2 / 1 / a / Solution

A cyclic rotation moves the first character to the end without changing the cyclic order of the remaining characters. Starting with the specified terminator-first row and repeatedly rotating left gives the following matrix; its row order is only a construction order, not a sorting order:Under lexicographic order, compare characters from left to right, using $\$<A<C<G$. The sorted cyclic rotation matrix is thereforeThe Burrows-Wheeler transform is the last column, read downwards, so the transformed string is