%0 Journal Article
%T Oligomeric protein structure networks: insights into protein-protein interactions
%A KV Brinda
%A Saraswathi Vishveshwara
%J BMC Bioinformatics
%D 2005
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2105-6-296
%X A variety of interactions such as hydrogen bond, salt bridges, aromatic and hydrophobic interactions, which occur at the interfaces are identified in a consolidated manner as amino acid clusters at the interface, from this study. Moreover, the characterization of the highly connected hub-forming residues at the interfaces and their comparison with the hubs from the non-interface regions and the non-hubs in the interface regions show that there is a predominance of charged interactions at the interfaces. Further, strong and weak interfaces are identified on the basis of the interaction strength between amino acid residues and the sizes of the interface clusters, which also show that many protein interfaces are stronger than their monomeric protein cores. The interface strengths evaluated based on the interface clusters and hubs also correlate well with experimentally determined dissociation constants for known complexes. Finally, the interface hubs identified using the present method correlate very well with experimentally determined hotspots in the interfaces of protein complexes obtained from the Alanine Scanning Energetics database (ASEdb). A few predictions of interface hot spots have also been made based on the results obtained from this analysis, which await experimental verification.The construction and analysis of oligomeric protein structure networks and their comparison with monomeric protein structure networks provide insights into protein association. Further, the interface hubs identified using the present method can be effective targets for interface de-stabilizing mutations. We believe this analysis will significantly enhance our knowledge of the principles behind protein association and also aid in protein design.It is well known that a vast majority of cellular functions are mediated through protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. Protein association is implicated in cellular signal transduction, antigen-antibody binding, in the regulation of g
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/6/296