A Data Integration Approach to Predict Host-Pathogen Protein-Protein Interactions: Application to Recognize Protein Interactions between Human and a Malarial Parasite

摘要

Lack of large-scale efforts aimed at recognizing interactions between host and pathogens limits our understandingof many diseases. We present a simple and generally applicable bioinformatics approach for the analysis of possible interactionsbetween the proteins of a parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and human host. In the first step, the physically compatibleinteractions between the parasite and human proteins are recognized using homology detection. This dataset of putative in vitrointeractions is combined with large-scale datasets of expression and sub-cellular localization. This integrated approach reducesdrastically the number of false positives and hence can be used for generating testable hypotheses. We could recognize knowninteractions previously suggested in the literature. We also propose new predictions which involve interactions of some of theparasite proteins of yet unknown function. The method described is generally applicable to any host-pathogen pair and can thusbe of general value to studies of host-pathogen protein-protein interactions.