Protein Interactions Offer Up Clues to Disease

FRIDAY, Feb. 24 (HealthDay News) -- The first large-scale analysis of interactions between proteins in human cells has revealed information that may help scientists identify new genes that cause genetic diseases.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore, India, analyzed a database of more than 25,000 protein-protein interactions and developed what's believed to be the most detailed human "interactome" -- the interplay of proteins that occurs in cells when people are healthy or when they have disease.

The researchers found that proteins encoded by mutated genes involved in inherited disorders were likely to interact with proteins already known to cause similar disorders. The study also disputes the long-held belief that a specific protein's relative importance is always indicated by the number of other proteins it interacts with in a cell.

The findings appear in the March issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

"Genes are important because they are the blueprints for proteins, but proteins are where the action is in human life and health," Dr. Akhilesh Pandey, an assistant professor in the Institute of Genetic Medicine and the departments of biological chemistry, oncology and pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.

"This ability to find links between sets of proteins involved in different genetic disorders offers a novel approach for more rapidly identifying new candidate genes involved in human diseases," he added.