Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens
Protein Protein Interactions
Protein Protein Interactions (PPIs) are all the interactions that proteins are capable of (protein-RNA, protein-ligand, etc.).
Proteins interact, forming complexes in order to modify each other or even in order to carry one another. PPIs play a major role as they participate in the basic functions of a cell. Studying these networks and interactions, helps the better understanding of the complex cellular processes and allows inferences about the function of individual proteins through “guilt–by-association”.
With the completion of various genome sequences, prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the main challenge is to understand the role and interactions of all gene products. In order to detect PPIs, various methods have been used. More recently, high throughput methods have been developed for large scale detection of PPIs, such as the yeast two hybrid system, mass spectroscopy, protein microarrays, the split-ubiquitin method etc.
The experimental methods for detecting PPIs are time-consuming and are generating many false positives and false negative results. Therefore bioinformatics and computational methods are used in order to predict more efficiently PPIs by integrating data from different sources. A combination of computational and experimental methods can give a better and more accurate understanding.
Due to the large amount of data available concerning interactions, many PPI databases were created, in order to store them such as the MIPS, DIP, BIND, IntAct, Gavin’s.
Publications:
Moschopoulos C., Likothanassis S., Stamatopoulos V.G., Kossida S. Applying graph theory on protein- protein interaction data, Conference proceedings, 2009, IWSSIP 2009, Chalkida, Greece
Students:
Vasilis Danos
Babis Moschopoulos
Athina Theodosiou
Collaborator:
Spyros Lykothanasis, PhD
