Proteins mediate their biological function through interactions with other proteins. Therefore, the systematic identification and characterization of protein-protein interactions have become a powerful proteomic strategy to understand protein function and comprehensive cellular regulatory networks. For the screening of valosin-containing protein, carboxyl terminus of Hsp70-interacting protein (CHIP), and amphiphysin II interaction partners, we utilized a membrane-based array technology that allows the identification of human protein-protein interactions with crude bacterial cell extracts. Many novel interaction pairs such as valosin-containing protein/autocrine motility factor receptor, CHIP/caytaxin, or amphiphysin II/DLP4 were identified and subsequently confirmed by pull-down, two-hybrid and co-immunoprecipitation experiments. In addition, assays were performed to validate the interactions functionally. CHIP e.g. was found to efficiently polyubiquitinate caytaxin in vitro, suggesting that it might influence caytaxin degradation in vivo. Using peptide arrays, we also identified the binding motifs in the proteins DLP4, XRCC4, and fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase, which are crucial for the association with the Src homology 3 domain of amphiphysin II. Together these studies indicate that our human proteome array technology permits the identification of protein-protein interactions that are functionally involved in neurodegenerative disease processes, the degradation of protein substrates, and the transport of membrane vesicles. Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 5:234 -244, 2006.As protein-protein interactions (PPIs) 1 are central to most biological processes, their systematic identification is considered a key strategy for uncovering the complex organization principles of functional cellular networks (1-3). A number of experimental and computational techniques have been developed to determine all the potential and actual PPIs in selected model organisms (4 -8) and humans (9 -11).Because protein arrays allow the parallel detection of addressable elements in a single experiment (12-18), they have been recognized as a promising technology for the identification of PPIs (19,20) or other specific biochemical activities (20 -23), and much effort has been devoted to their development in recent years. Zhu et al. (20) e.g. printed 5,800 purified yeast proteins onto coated glass slides and used them successfully in proof-of-principle experiments for the detection of novel calmodulin-and phospholipid-interacting proteins. Protein arrays were also used efficiently for identifying novel targets of protein kinases (24 -26). In principle, the production of protein arrays and their utilization for systematic large scale interaction and activity screens has proven viable. One major drawback, however, has been the necessity to use purified proteins. Protein purification is usually difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. For array-based studies, especially high throughput systematic screening (19), technologies are needed that permit...