Wuchty et al. (2017)
The Protein Interactome of Streptococcus pneumoniae and
Bacterial Meta-interactomes Improve Function Predictions.
mSystems 2:1-10

(Translated by Karun Rajesh)

Abstract

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a pathogenic bacterium that can cause many types of illnesses, with many of these illnesses being life-threatening (bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, ear infections, etc.) However, of this dangerous bacterium, only a third of the proteins have been fully characterized. To find these unknown protein functions, Wuchty et al. employ a yeast-2-hybrid method of determining protein to protein interaction to characterize unknown protein functions. This network of interactions was augmented with another protein interaction network composed of orthologs of proteins in S. pneumoniae found in well-studied bacteria. The yeast-2-hybrid method by itself was compared to that of the yeast-2-hybrid method with the additional meta-interactome protein data for the characterization of proteins. It was found that this additional meta-interactome protein data led to 299 proteins S. pneumoniae to be classified that previously were not.