With the completion of the genome sequence of a number of organisms, analysis of the gene products, the proteins, is the on-going challenge.
Researchers from the Institut Curie and from the Paris-based biotechnology company Hybrigenics announced today that they have built a protein-protein interaction map of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This ‘simple’ model organism allows them to study a ‘reference set’ of proteins that includes most of those known to be involved in human cancer. Since proteins function in networks, the systematic identification of the physical interactions that occur between proteins will help understanding their biological function, and improve our capacity to intervene and, ultimately, to discover novel, more specific therapeutic targets.
Their results are published in the March 1st issue of Genome Research.
The completion of the sequencing of the genome from diverse organisms comes with a big surprise: a human being has ‘only’ 25,000 to 30,000 genes. This is roughly 2 times more than a fly (13,600 genes) and much less than rice (50,000 genes).
Could it be that the complexity of a human being comes from the proteins? The number and biological functions of most of these gene-encoded biomolecules are not yet known. What we do know is that a single gene can contain information to build different ‘forms’ of a protein. Furthermore, these related proteins can be part of similar or, conversely, different biological pathways and thus can convey very diverse biological functions. Studying the full protein repertoire at the scale of a whole organism is the current challenge of proteomics.
Tell me whom you’re interacting with... I shall tell you who you are
The number of interactions between proteins is thought to be huge. Exploration of these complex protein networks requires specific methodologies as well as powerful bioinformatic tools to analyze them.