Several attempts have been made at systematically mapping protein-protein interaction, or “interactome” networks. However, it remains difficult to assess the quality and coverage of existing datasets. We describe a framework that uses an empirically-based approach to rigorously dissect quality parameters of currently available human interactome maps. Our results indicate that high-throughput yeast two-hybrid (HT-Y2H) interactions for human are superior in precision to literature-curated interactions supported by only a single publication, suggesting that HT-Y2H is suitable to map a significant portion of the human interactome. We estimate that the human interactome contains ~130,000 binary interactions, most of which remain to be mapped. Similar to estimates of DNA sequence data quality and genome size early in the human genome project, estimates of protein interaction data quality and interactome size are critical to establish the magnitude of the task of comprehensive human interactome mapping and to illuminate a path towards this goal.

Cellular functions are mediated through complex systems of macromolecules and metabolites linked through biochemical and physical interactions, represented in interactome models as 'nodes' and 'edges', respectively. Better understanding of genotype-to-phenotype relationships in human disease will require modeling of how disease-causing mutations affect systems or interactome properties. Here we investigate how perturbations of interactome networks may differ between complete loss of gene products ('node removal') and interaction-specific or edge-specific ('edgetic') alterations. Global computational analyses of B50 000 known causative mutations in human Mendelian disorders revealed clear separations of mutations probably corresponding to those of node removal versus edgetic perturbations. Experimental characterization of mutant alleles in various disorders identified diverse edgetic interaction profiles of mutant proteins, which correlated with distinct structural properties of disease proteins and disease mechanisms. Edgetic perturbations seem to confer distinct functional consequences from node removal because a large fraction of cases in which a single gene is linked to multiple disorders can be modeled by distinguishing edgetic network perturbations. Edgetic network perturbation models might improve both the understanding of dissemination of disease alleles in human populations and the development of molecular therapeutic strategies.

No abstract