Networks In The Examination Of Yeast Proteins
https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt1200_1257#f1
The article I examined focuses on the protein to protein interactions which occur within yeast. The result of the experiment was a map of over 2300 interactions across over 1550 proteins. Within this study, the function of the proteins were studied and the interactions between proteins with the same functions versus the interaction of proteins with different functions were analyzed. Additionally, interactions of proteins within the same versus different subcellular areas of the yeast were examined. A key takeaway from the study was the possibility of predicting the function and location of a specific yeast protein based on the interactions it had with other proteins. The application of the network within yeast is to help categorize previously uncharacterized proteins based upon their interactions with proteins of known function. This research may one day be applicable to the biological study of other organisms as well.
An interesting find in the study was that there was only one large network containing protein to protein interactions. This network contained 2358 links between 1548 individual proteins. The next largest component contained only 19 proteins and 193 components were found which contained 4 or fewer proteins.
This article was interesting as the interactions found within the yeast proteins follow the fundamental patterns of Networks which we have learned about in class. For example, the yeast network strongly resemble something like a friendship network which we saw in class. There was one large groups then a few smaller groups outside of the major cluster. On the topic of these groups, they can be classified as “components” which we learned about in class. Components in this specific instance are groups of proteins which interact with each other. These components are connected to other clusters of proteins by “local bridges” which in the case of this article are protein to protein interactions within the yeast.