Gabaldó n, Toni. Computational approaches for the prediction of protein function in the mitochondrion. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 291: C1121-C1128, 2006. First published July 26, 2006 doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00225.2006.-Understanding a complex biological system, such as the mitochondrion, requires the identification of the complete repertoire of proteins targeted to the organelle, the characterization of these, and finally, the elucidation of the functional and physical interactions that occur within the mitochondrion. In the last decade, significant developments have contributed to increase our understanding of the mitochondrion, and among these, computational research has played a significant role. Not only general bioinformatics tools have been applied in the context of the mitochondrion, but also some computational techniques have been specifically developed to address problems that arose from within the mitochondrial research field. In this review the contribution of bioinformatics to mitochondrial biology is addressed through a survey of current computational methods that can be applied to predict which proteins will be localized to the mitochondrion and to unravel their functional interactions. genomic context; proteome THE DETAIL AND ACCURACY with which we can model the systemlevel properties of the mitochondrion relies substantially on how comprehensive our knowledge is about its individual components and their corresponding interactions. In recent years, great progress has been achieved toward the identification of the complete set of proteins that perform their functions inside the mitochondrion, the so-called mitochondrial proteome. For instance, advances in subcellular proteomics have allowed the isolation of 615 proteins from human heart mitochondria (60), and the combination of experimental research with genomics and sequence analyses has expanded the set of mitochondrial proteins to nearly a thousand (13). Nevertheless, despite these efforts, a substantial fraction of the human mitochondrial proteome, estimated to contain about 1500 proteins (37), remains still unidentified. Moreover, a large fraction of the identified proteins have unknown functions, and for many of the rest the knowledge of their biological roles is just general.During the last decade, the concourse of computational biology in mitochondrial research has been essential. For instance, bioinformatics tools have been widely used for predicting which proteins are targeted to the mitochondrion and for identifying their functional homologs. More recently, a number of novel computational techniques that integrate different sources of data and unravel new functional interactions among proteins have been developed (24). These techniques, known as context-based function prediction methods, are increasingly being used in the context of the mitochondrial proteome and have proven especially useful for the identification of novel disease genes. Here I survey the most prominent computational biology methods that are used in the field of mitochondr...