On the interconnection of stable protein complexes: inter-complex hubs and their conservation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Homo sapiens networks.

On the interconnection of stable protein complexes: inter-complex hubs and their conservation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Homo sapiens networks. Int J Bioinform Res Appl. 2015;11(6):483-502 Authors: Guerra C Abstract Protein complexes are key molecular entities that perform a variety of essential cellular functions. The connectivity of proteins within a complex has been widely investigated with both experimental and computational techniques. We developed a computational approach to identify and characterise proteins that play a role in interconnecting complexes. We computed a measure of inter-complex centrality, the crossroad index, based on disjoint paths connecting proteins in distinct complexes and identified inter-complex hubs as proteins with a high value of the crossroad index. We applied the approach to a set of stable complexes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and in Homo sapiens. Just as done for hubs, we evaluated the topological and biological properties of inter-complex hubs addressing the following questions. Do inter-complex hubs tend to be evolutionary conserved? What is the relation between crossroad index and essentiality? We found a good correlation between inter-complex hubs and both evolutionary conservation and essentiality. PMID: 26642359 [PubMed - in process]
Source: International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications - Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Tags: Int J Bioinform Res Appl Source Type: research