( tly the same. In fact there are striki...)Examination of internal 'wiring' of yeast, worm, and fly reveals conserved circuits

The team included Roded Sharan, a computer scientist currently at the Tel-Aviv University in Israel; Tanja Kuhn and Peter Uetz, researchers at the Institute of Genetics in Karlsruhe, Germany; Ideker, Silpa Suthram, Ryan M. Kelley, Scott McCuine, and Taylor Sittler at UCSD; and Richard M. Karp, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Their analysis revealed conservation and overlap in yeast, worm, and fly in 71 distinct "network regions" that included such essential functions as protein degradation, RNA polyadenylation and splicing, protein phosphorylation and signal transduction, DNA synthesis, nuclear-cytoplasmic transport, and protein folding. Such networks enriched for several functions suggested to the researchers that cellular processes may work together in a coordinated fashion.

In contrast, the team did not find in yeast a network they found in both worm and fly that is involved in the guidance of nerve cell axons to their synaptic targets, or junctions, with other nerve cells. The process, considered an initial step in the development of the central nervous system, would not be needed by lower organisms, such as yeast, which don't have nerves.

Ideker predicted that protein-interaction studies will soon become indispensable tools for biologists seeking a better understanding of all cellular functions. He said that just as a species evolved new proteins to give it a selective advantage, it also could have evolved a new combination of existing proteins. Such novel arrangements would have generated new capabilities or changed existing ones.

Pharmaceutical companies have also not had the luxury of protein-interaction databases. They have routinely identified promising new drugs based on trial-and-error screenings of those molecules' ability to completely disable target proteins. Ideker said protein interaction inf
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Source:University of California - San Diego