Computational prediction of protein-protein interactions in sphingolipid signaling network

Proteins carry out most of the work in the cell such as immunological recognition, DNA repair and replication, enzymatic activity, cell signaling by interacting with other proteins. Therefore, elucidation of the protein-protein interaction network will assist in understanding molecular mechanism of cellular activities. Recent advances in high-throughput experimental methods have provided a large amount of data that need to be sorted and interpreted to find biologically relevant interactions and pathways. In silico methods that can accurately predict properties of protein-protein interactions have gained increased interest. In this study, the network of sphingolipid (SL) signaling proteins was constructed using computational prediction methods to contribute to missing interactions among the components of sphingolipid protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. As a result of the studies by our group, the potential protein interactions between YER019W-YHL020C and YGR143W-YKL126W were identified. The new predictions proposed by this research can guide rational design of new experiments.