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Experimental Methods for Protein Interaction Identification and Characterization

  • Chapter
Protein-protein Interactions and Networks

Part of the book series: Computational Biology ((COBO,volume 9))

Abstract

There are dozens of methods for the detection of protein-protein interactions but they fall into a few broad categories. Fragment complementation assays such as the yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) system are based on split proteins that are functionally reconstituted by fusions of interacting proteins. Biophysical methods include structure determination and mass spectrometric (MS) identification of proteins in complexes. Biochemical methods include methods such as far western blotting and peptide arrays. Only the Y2H and protein complex purification combined with MS have been used on a larger scale. Due to the lack of data it is still difficult to compare these methods with respect to their efficiency and error rates. Current data does not favor any particular method and thus multiple experimental approaches are necessary to maximally cover the interactome of any target cell or organism.

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Uetz, P., Titz, B., Cagney, G. (2008). Experimental Methods for Protein Interaction Identification and Characterization. In: Panchenko, A., Przytycka, T. (eds) Protein-protein Interactions and Networks. Computational Biology, vol 9. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-125-1_1

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