On rigidity of toric varieties arising from bipartite graphs

One can associate to a bipartite graph a so-called edge ring whose spectrum is an affine normal toric variety. We characterize the faces of the (edge) cone associated to this toric variety in terms of some independent sets of the bipartite graph. By applying to this characterization the combinatorial study of deformations of toric varieties by Altmann, we present certain criteria for their rigidity purely in terms of graphs.