title: Determining the distance to monotonicity of a biological network: a graph-theoretical approach.
abstract: The authors use ideas from graph theory in order to determine how distant is a given biological network from being monotone. On the signed graph representing the system, the minimal number of sign inconsistencies (i.e. the distance to monotonicity) is shown to be equal to the minimal number of fundamental cycles having a negative sign. Suitable operations aiming at computing such a number are also proposed and shown to outperform all algorithms that are so far existing for this task. [Includes supplementary material].
authors.affiliation: SISSA International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Iacono
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ramezani
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Soranzo
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Altafini
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D020543:Proteome / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D020543:Proteome