Scientists produce a reference map of human protein interactions
The human body is composed of billions of cells, each of which is made and maintained through countless interactions among its molecular parts. But which interactions sustain health and which ones can cause disease when they go awry? The human genome project has provided us with a “parts list” for the cell, but only if we can understand how these parts go together, or interact, can we really begin to understand how the cell works and what goes wrong in disease. To answer these questions, scientists needed a reference map of interactions — an interactome — between gene-encoded proteins, which make up cells and do most of the work in them. “Since the mid-1990s, our collaborative team has pushed the idea that interactome maps can illuminate fundamental aspects of life,” says Marc Vidal, one team leader and director of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “Our paper...