Associative processing memory (APM) may be used to align reads to a reference sequence. The APM may store shifted permutations and/or other permutations of the reference sequence. A read may be compared to some or all of the permutations of the reference sequence and the APM may provide an output for each comparison. In some examples, the APM may compare the read to many permutations of the reference sequence to the read in parallel. Inferences may be made based on the comparisons between the read and the portions and/or permutations of a reference sequence. Based on the inferences, a candidate alignment location in the reference sequence for a read to be determined.