New way to explore how life, disease work
Researchers have built a map that shows how thousands of proteins in a fruit fly cell communicate with each other. This is the largest and most detailed protein interaction map of a multicellular organism, demonstrating how approximately 5,000, or one-third, of the proteins cooperate to keep life going. “My group has been working for decades, trying to unravel the precise connections among the proteins and gain insight into how the cell functions as a whole,” says Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of cell biology and senior author of the paper. “For me, and hopefully researchers studying protein interactions, this map is a dream come true.” The study is published Oct. 28 in the journal Cell. While genes are a cell’s data repository, containing all the instructions necessary for life, proteins are its labor force, talking to each other constantly and channeling vital information through vast and complicated networks to keep life...