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posted by janrinok on Saturday October 24 2015, @10:28PM   Printer-friendly

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich and at the MPI of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden have now drawn a detailed map of human protein interactions. Using a novel mass spectrometric quantification method, the researchers determined the strength of each interaction. "Our data revealed that most interactions are weak, but critical for the structure of the entire network," explains Marco Hein, first author of the study. The paper has now been published in the journal Cell.

Proteins are the building blocks and central protagonists of the cell and contribute to all processes of life at the molecular level. They carry out their tasks by binding to each other and building interaction networks. With the help of quantitative mass spectrometry, scientists can determine precisely which proteins interact with each other. The technology can be described as molecular fishing: One protein is selected as bait. Fishing it out of a complex mixture retrieves all its interaction partners as well, which are then identified by a mass spectrometer. Scientists from Martinsried and Dresden have now analyzed 1,100 such bait proteins in a large-scale project. They mapped a network of over 5,400 proteins, which are connected by 28,000 interactions.

The different interactions have very distinct properties. Some connections are strong and serve a structural role, others are weak and transient, for instance in signal transduction pathways. Measuring the strength of an interaction is very laborious and hence complicated in high throughput studies. Using a novel strategy, the German scientists established a method of estimating the strength of each interaction indirectly. They measure the copy numbers of all proteins in the cell, and quantify the ratio at which each interactor is retrieved along with its corresponding bait protein. The stronger an interaction, the more of an interactor is recovered.


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:50AM

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:50AM (#254160) Journal

    I see it as kinda a "status report" in hacking the ultimate CPU.... Life.

    No one seems to know what makes us tick, but a lot of dedicated scientists are probing away trying to understand the architecture of these marvelous molecular machines.

    Imagine the possibilities ahead if we can understand how this thing works.

    I thought I was lucky being able to live through the bringup of long distance communications, GPS navigation, solid-state electronics and the internet.

    These were only yet another foundation for something far grander, that the next generation ( providing we do not wipe ourselves out with petty politics and religious war ) will build.

    Religious war? All religious war I have ever studied was a disguise for economic greed, all over who collected obeisance and tithes/taxes from the peasants. It was disguised as religion so the lower classes would take up arms for the controlling entity and do their dirty work for them, as the controlling entity leads superstitious and gullible lower classes to believe they would be held accountable for all eternity for their obedience to their earthly master. Very effective leadership technique, as masters who rule by violence unwittingly demonstrate violence is the way to solve problems, and the peasants eventually learn the technique and flip it right back onto their masters. Never ends well for the elites.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]