Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, Beijing, China.
Virulence. 2012 Aug 15;3(5):459-63. doi: 10.4161/viru.21104.
The interaction between proteins is one of the most important features of protein functions. In general, the protein-protein interactions (PPIs) network of an organism is very complex, consisting of huge amount of PPIs. Functional modules can be identified from the complex protein interaction networks. It follows that the investigation of functional modules will generate a better understanding of cellular organization, processes and functions. However, it is a great challenge to apply modularity analysis to under-studied organism, even though this organism has already been sequenced, as there are few or none experimental validated PPI data for them. Therefore, by integrating several bioinformatics methods, we provide a solution for modularity analysis of any sequenced organism. By this way, new information may be found for the organism in different level, such as protein-protein interaction, pathways or cellular process. For the computation part, it takes one to two weeks. The main impact factors are computer power and size of the PPI network. It takes longer time for the manually analysis of biological meanings of the modules.
蛋白质之间的相互作用是蛋白质功能的最重要特征之一。一般来说，生物体的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用（PPI）网络非常复杂，包含大量的 PPI。可以从复杂的蛋白质互作网络中识别功能模块。因此，对功能模块的研究将更好地理解细胞的组织、过程和功能。然而，即使对于已经测序的生物体，应用模块性分析也是一个巨大的挑战，因为它们几乎没有或根本没有经过实验验证的 PPI 数据。因此，我们通过整合几种生物信息学方法，为任何已测序的生物体的模块性分析提供了一种解决方案。通过这种方式，可以在不同的层次上为生物体找到新的信息，例如蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用、途径或细胞过程。对于计算部分，需要一到两周的时间。主要的影响因素是计算机的能力和 PPI 网络的大小。模块的生物学意义的人工分析需要更长的时间。
