No Arabic abstract
The degree distribution of many biological and technological networks has been described as a power-law distribution. While the degree distribution does not capture all aspects of a network, it has often been suggested that its functional form contains important clues as to underlying evolutionary processes that have shaped the network. Generally, the functional form for the degree distribution has been determined in an ad-hoc fashion, with clear power-law like behaviour often only extending over a limited range of connectivities. Here we apply formal model selection techniques to decide which probability distribution best describes the degree distributions of protein interaction networks. Contrary to previous studies this well defined approach suggests that the degree distribution of many molecular networks is often better described by distributions other than the popular power-law distribution. This, in turn, suggests that simple, if elegant, models may not necessarily help in the quantitative understanding of complex biological processes.
Here we present ComPPI, a cellular compartment specific database of proteins and their interactions enabling an extensive, compartmentalized protein-protein interaction network analysis (http://ComPPI.LinkGroup.hu). ComPPI enables the user to filter biologically unlikely interactions, where the two interacting proteins have no common subcellular localizations and to predict novel properties, such as compartment-specific biological functions. ComPPI is an integrated database covering four species (S. cerevisiae, C. elegans, D. melanogaster and H. sapiens). The compilation of nine protein-protein interaction and eight subcellular localization data sets had four curation steps including a manually built, comprehensive hierarchical structure of more than 1600 subcellular localizations. ComPPI provides confidence scores for protein subcellular localizations and protein-protein interactions. ComPPI has user-friendly search options for individual proteins giving their subcellular localization, their interactions and the likelihood of their interactions considering the subcellular localization of their interacting partners. Download options of search results, whole proteomes, organelle-specific interactomes and subcellular localization data are available on its website. Due to its novel features, ComPPI is useful for the analysis of experimental results in biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as for proteome-wide studies in bioinformatics and network science helping cellular biology, medicine and drug design.
Understanding the mathematical properties of graphs underling biological systems could give hints on the evolutionary mechanisms behind these structures. In this article we perform a complete statistical analysis over thousands of graphs representing metabolic and protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. First, we investigate the quality of fits obtained for the nodes degree distributions to power-law functions. This analysis suggests that a power-law distribution poorly describes the data except for the far right tail in the case of PPI networks. Next we obtain descriptive statistics for the main graph parameters and try to identify the properties that deviate from the expected values had the networks been built by randomly linking nodes with the same degree distribution. This survey identifies the properties of biological networks which are not solely the result of their degree distribution, but emerge from yet unidentified mechanisms other than those that drive these distributions. The findings suggest that, while PPI networks have properties that differ from their expected values in their randomiz
Proteins are an important class of biomolecules that serve as essential building blocks of the cells. Their three-dimensional structures are responsible for their functions. In this thesis we have investigated the protein structures using a network theoretical approach. While doing so we used a coarse-grained method, viz., complex network analysis. We model protein structures at two length scales as Protein Contact Networks (PCN) and as Long-range Interaction Networks (LINs). We found that proteins by virtue of being characterised by high amount of clustering, are small-world networks. Apart from the small-world nature, we found that proteins have another general property, viz., assortativity. This is an interesting and exceptional finding as all other complex networks (except for social networks) are known to be disassortative. Importantly, we could identify one of the major topological determinant of assortativity by building appropriate controls.
From the spectral plot of the (normalized) graph Laplacian, the essential qualitative properties of a network can be simultaneously deduced. Given a class of empirical networks, reconstruction schemes for elucidating the evolutionary dynamics leading to those particular data can then be developed. This method is exemplified for protein-protein interaction networks. Traces of their evolutionary history of duplication and divergence processes are identified. In particular, we can identify typical specific features that robustly distinguish protein-protein interaction networks from other classes of networks, in spite of possible statistical fluctuations of the underlying data.
Are turn-on and turn-off functions in protein-protein interaction networks exact opposites of each other? To answer this question, we implement a minimal model for the evolution of functional protein-interaction networks using a sequence-based mutational algorithm, and apply the model to study neutral drift in networks that yield oscillatory dynamics. We study the roles of activators and deactivators, two core components of oscillatory protein interaction networks, and find a striking asymmetry in the roles of activating and deactivating proteins, where activating proteins tend to be synergistic and deactivating proteins tend to be competitive.