Reconstructing graphs and their connectivity using graphlets

Abstract

Graphlets are subgraphs rooted at a fixed vertex. The number of occurrences of graphlets aligned to a particular vertex, called graphlet degree sequence (gds), gives a topological description of the surrounding of the analyzed vertex. Graphlet degree distribution (gdd) of a graph is a matrix containing graphlet degree sequence for all vertices in the given graph. A long standing open problem called reconstruction conjecture (RC) asks whether the structure of a graph is uniquely determined by the multiset of its vertex-deleted subgraphs. Graphlet degree distribution up to size (n - 1), (<= n - 1)-gdd, gives more information to reconstruct the graph and we use it to reconstruct any graph having a unique almost-asymmetric vertex-deleted subgraph, where almost-asymmetric means that at most one automorphism orbit has size larger than one. Moreover, we prove that any graph containing a vertex-cut of size 1 or any graph of order n having a vertex with degree at most 2 or at least n-2 is reconstructible from its (<= n - 1)-gdd, which expands results shown in the standard RC. We also discuss the relation between gdd and graph connectivity and the conditions on (<= 3)-gdd, whose breaking means that no graph with such gdd exists.