Integration of Genomic Data for Inferring Protein Complexes from Global Protein–Protein Interaction Networks

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play crucial roles in virtually every aspect of cellular function within an organism. One important objective of modern biology is the extraction of functional modules, such as protein complexes from global protein interaction networks. This paper describes how seven genomic features and four experimental interaction data sets were combined using a Bayesian-networks-based data integration approach to infer PPI networks in yeast. Greater coverage and higher accuracy were achieved than in previous high-throughput studies of PPI networks in yeast. A Markov clustering algorithm was then used to extract protein complexes from the inferred protein interaction networks. The quality of the computed complexes was evaluated using the hand-curated complexes from the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences database and gene-ontology-driven semantic similarity. The results indicated that, by integrating multiple genomic information sources, a better clustering result was obtained in terms of both statistical measures and biological relevance.