We introduce a new combinatorial optimization problem in this article, called the minimum common integer partition (MCIP) problem, which was inspired by computational biology applications including ortholog assignment and DNA fingerprint...
moreWe introduce a new combinatorial optimization problem in this article, called the minimum common integer partition (MCIP) problem, which was inspired by computational biology applications including ortholog assignment and DNA fingerprint assembly. A partition of a positive integer n is a multiset of positive integers that add up to exactly n , and an integer partition of a multiset S of integers is defined as the multiset union of partitions of integers in S . Given a sequence of multisets S 1 , S 2 , …, S k of integers, where k ≥ 2, we say that a multiset is a common integer partition if it is an integer partition of every multiset S i , 1 ≤ i ≤ k . The MCIP problem is thus defined as to find a common integer partition of S 1 , S 2 , …, S k with the minimum cardinality, denoted as MCIP( S 1 , S 2 , …, S k ). It is easy to see that the MCIP problem is NP-hard, since it generalizes the well-known subset sum problem. We can in fact show that it is APX-hard. We will also present a 5/4-...