Interaction Generality, a Measurement to Assess the Reliability of a Protein-Protein Interaction

摘要

As whole-genome and complete cDNA sequences became available for numerous organisms, the focus of many research efforts is shifting rapidly from genomics to proteomics. One of the most important approaches in proteomics is the large-scale analysis ofprotein-protein interactions, because most proteins work as complexes to regulate biological processes in cells and even the whole body. High-throughput genome-wide screening of protein-protein interactions has been carried out in yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, and higher organisms, such as mouse. Several successful computational analyses of interaction data also have been completed. On the other hand, it is widely accepted that the publicly available protein-protein interaction data, especially those obtained from two-hybrid systems, contain many false-positive interactions. Mering et al. estimate that as much as 50% of interactions obtained from yeast-two hybrid are false-positives according to the certain criteria. Thus a method to assess reliability of each protein-protein interaction is necessary. Here we define Interaction Generality (IG) measure and show that it can assess reliability of protein-protein interactions.