Evidence for the additions of clustered interacting nodes during the evolution of protein interaction networks from network motifs

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Hanchang Sun¹  Qijun Liu²  Lin Hou³  Zhongyang Liu⁴ 

[1] Department of Automatic Control, College of Mechatronics and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China;Department of Chemistry and Biology, College of Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China;School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China;State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, Beijing Institute of Radiation Medicine, Beijing, China

关键词: Orthologous Group;    Protein Interaction Network;    Network Motif;    Phylogenetic Profile;    Random Expectation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2148-11-133

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: BioMed Central

【 摘 要 】

High-throughput screens have revealed large-scale protein interaction networks defining most cellular functions. How the proteins were added to the protein interaction network during its growth is a basic and important issue. Network motifs represent the simplest building blocks of cellular machines and are of biological significance. Here we study the evolution of protein interaction networks from the perspective of network motifs. We find that in current protein interaction networks, proteins of the same age class tend to form motifs and such co-origins of motif constituents are affected by their topologies and biological functions. Further, we find that the proteins within motifs whose constituents are of the same age class tend to be densely interconnected, co-evolve and share the same biological functions, and these motifs tend to be within protein complexes. Our findings provide novel evidence for the hypothesis of the additions of clustered interacting nodes and point out network motifs, especially the motifs with the dense topology and specific function may play important roles during this process. Our results suggest functional constraints may be the underlying driving force for such additions of clustered interacting nodes.

【 授权许可】

CC BY