Approximation Algorithms for Orienting Mixed Graphs

Graph orientation is a fundamental problem in graph theory that has recently arisen in the study of signaling-regulatory pathways in protein networks. Given a graph and a list of ordered source-target vertex pairs, it calls for assigning directions to the edges of the graph so as to maximize the number of pairs that admit a directed source-to-target path. When the input graph is undirected, a sub-logarithmic approximation is known for the problem. However, the approximability of the biologically-relevant variant, in which the input graph has both directed and undirected edges, was left open. Here we give the first approximation algorithm to this problem. Our algorithm provides a sub-linear guarantee in the general case, and logarithmic guarantees for structured instances.