Interactome Data and Databases Different Types of Protein Interaction.pdfVIP

Comparative and Functional Genomics Comp Funct Genom 2004; 5: 173–178. Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI: 10.1002/cfg.377 Conference Review Interactome data and databases: different types of protein interaction Javier De Las Rivas* and Alberto de Luis Cancer Research Center (CIC, USAL-CSIC), University of Salamanca and CSIC, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, E37007 Salamanca, Spain *Correspondence to: Abstract Javier De Las Rivas, Cancer Research Center (CIC, In recent years, the biomolecular sciences have been driven forward by overwhelming USAL-CSIC), University of advances in new biotechnological high-throughput experimental methods and bioin- Salamanca and CSIC, Campus formatic genome-wide computational methods. Such breakthroughs are producing Miguel de Unamuno, E37007 huge amounts of new data that need to be carefully analysed to obtain correct and Salamanca, Spain. useful scientific knowledge. One of the fields where this advance has become more E-mail: jrivas@usal.es intense is the study of the network of ‘protein–protein interactions’, i.e. the ‘inter- actome’. In this short review we comment on the main data and databases produced in this field in last 5 years. We also present a rationalized scheme of biological def- initions that will be useful for a better understanding and interpretation of ‘what a protein–protein interaction is’ and ‘which types of protein–protein interactions are found in a living cell’. Finally, we comment on some assignments of interactome data to defined types of protein interaction and we present a new bioinformatic tool called