Bacillus subtilis protein interaction network analysis

Identifying functionally important proteins that are essential to the survival of a bacterial cell is of considerable interest in the development of new antimicrobial agents. Recent studies have shown that functionally important components in protein interaction networks may also be structurally important. We studied the protein interaction network of Bacillus subtilis to identify structurally essential proteins. Fifty-four percent of the structurally essential proteins identified by our methods were encoded by functionally essential genes.