It has been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Functional genomicists took that proverbial step earlier this month when a group led by Erich Wanker, of Berlin?s Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, reported the first yeast two-hybrid-derived human interactome (or protein-protein interaction) network in the September 1 online issue of Cell.Wanker was one of three researchers working on a first draft human interactome identified by Alison McCook in our August 1 cover story. The other researchers were Marc Vidal, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and Joel Bader, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. "More than 25 million protein pairs (4456 baits × 5632 preys) were examined, and 3269 interactions among 1064 baits and 1075 preys were identified," the authors write. Assessment of data quality using independent biochemical approaches like coimmunoprecipitation suggests more than 60% of the interactions are biologically real.The...
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