PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY, RUTH BARSHIR ET AL.Genes that cause hereditary diseases are often expressed across a wide range of cells in the human body, but the diseases they cause can be specific to a few tissues or organs. Many of these genes are expressed at higher levels in diseased tissues, and their proteins have a significantly greater tendency for tissue-specific protein interactions, according to a study published last week (June 12) in PLOS Computational Biology.
“Together the two factors we identified are relevant for as many as two thirds of the tissue-specific hereditary diseases [studied here],” Esti Yeger-Lotem from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and her colleagues wrote in their paper.
The researchers suggested that these tissue-specific interactions, known as an interactome, highlight disease mechanisms, and can provide an efficient filter to identify causal genes within diseased tissues.
To identify these interactomes, Yeger-Lotem‘s team combined gene and protein expression data for 16 different tissues, such as lung, brain, and breast, with data on protein-protein interactions within each. The researchers found all these tissues shared a core network of nearly 5,000 proteins and more than 26,000 protein-protein interactions.
When they analyzed genes linked to 303 hereditary diseases, the researchers found ...
