Lethality and centrality in protein networks

Hawoong Jeong; Sean P. Mason; Albert-Laszlo Barabasi; Zoltan N. Oltvai

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Lethality and centrality in protein networks

Hawoong Jeong, Sean P. Mason, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Zoltan N. Oltvai

arXiv:cond-mat/0105306v1May 15, 2001cond-mat.stat-mechcond-mat.dis-nnq-bio

TL;DR

The paper investigates how protein-network organization relates to cellular function in yeast. It mathematically analyzes the S. cerevisiae interaction network and finds a scale-free topology whose structure is associated with robustness and deletion phenotypes linked to protein position.

Problem
The paper addresses limited understanding of proteins as context-dependent components of a network of protein-protein interactions and functional modules.
Source: p. 1
Method
The paper mathematically analyzes a S. cerevisiae protein-interaction network containing 1870 proteins and 2240 identified direct physical interactions.
Source: p. 1
Results
The yeast interaction network follows a power law with an exponential cutoff near kc ≅ 20, and random protein removal does not affect its overall topology.
Source: p. 1
Takeaways & Limitations
Protein-network topology is linked to the phenotypic consequence of single-gene deletion through the protein product’s position in the interaction web.
Source: p. 1

Abstract

from arXiv · show

In this paper we present the first mathematical analysis of the protein interaction network found in the yeast, S. cerevisiae. We show that, (a) the identified protein network display a characteristic scale-free topology that demonstrate striking similarity to the inherent organization of metabolic networks in particular, and to that of robust and error-tolerant networks in general. (b) the likelihood that deletion of an individual gene product will prove lethal for the yeast cell clearly correlates with the number of interactions the protein has, meaning that highly-connected proteins are more likely to prove essential than proteins with low number of links to other proteins. These results suggest that a scale-free architecture is a generic property of cellular networks attributable to universal self-organizing principles of robust and error-tolerant networks and that will likely to represent a generic topology for protein-protein interactions.

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