Bioinformatics Analysis of Experimentally Determined Protein Complexes in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

  1. Zoltán Dezső1,
  2. Zoltán N. Oltvai2,3, and
  3. Albert-László Barabási1,3
  1. 1 Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA
  2. 2 Department of Pathology, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA

Abstract

Many important cellular functions are implemented by protein complexes that act as sophisticated molecular machines of varying size and temporal stability. Here we demonstrate quantitatively that protein complexes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are comprised of a core in which subunits are highly coexpressed, display the same deletion phenotype (essential or nonessential), and share identical functional classification and cellular localization. This core is surrounded by a functionally mixed group of proteins, which likely represent short-lived or spurious attachments. The results allow us to define the deletion phenotype and cellular task of most known complexes, and to identify with high confidence the biochemical role of hundreds of proteins with yet unassigned functionality.

Footnotes

  • Article and publication are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.1073603. Article published online before print in October 2003.

  • [Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]

  • 3 Corresponding author. E-MAIL alb{at}nd.edu; FAX (574) 631-5952. E-MAIL zno008{at}northwestern.edu; FAX (312) 503-8240.

    • Accepted July 22, 2003.
    • Received December 5, 2002.
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