Scientists map the world's largest protein

Scientists have found tens of thousands of new protein bonds, about a quarter of the total To reveal how proteins build cells and bodies, a team of scientists from many countries screened cells from a wide range of organisms, from amoebas to worms to mice to humans This feat of protein science is the result of the cooperation of three research groups from seven countries Led by Andrew Emili, Professor of Donnelly center at the University of Toronto and Edward Marcotte, Professor of the University of Texas at Austin, hundreds of new protein-protein interactions have been found, among which the contact of intracellular proteins accounts for about one quarter A loss of protein binding can cause disease The map has helped scientists lock in proteins in the disease The data will be made available to researchers around the world through open database access Although the sequencing of human genome more than ten years ago is undoubtedly one of the greatest discoveries in biology, it is just the beginning of people's deep understanding of cell work Gene is just a template, and its replica, protein, is the main work of cell operation The proteins are related and cooperate with each other Many proteins combine to form so-called molecular machines and play a key role in cell activities, such as the synthesis of new proteins, or the recovery of old proteins and the reconstruction of new ones But there are tens of thousands of proteins in human cells, and most of them are still unknown With the Emili and Marcotte maps, the team used state-of-the-art methods to extract thousands of molecular machines from cells and analyze their protein composition Then they set up a network similar to social networking sites, by exploring the connection between unknown proteins and known proteins, to infer the function of unknown proteins For example, if the unknown protein is linked to the "hybrid" protein, it is likely that the unknown protein also has the function of cell repair Today's landmark study collects information on the molecular machines of nine species, including Baker's yeast, amoeba, sea anemone, fly, worm, sea urchin, frog, mouse and human, from which a tree of life can be drawn This new map expands the number of protein conjugates to more than ten times that known, and allows us to see how they evolved over time "For me, the scale of this study alone is enough to attract people's attention The protein binding of each species we know has reached three times of the previously known level We can now very reliably predict that all animals have more than one million protein interactions through the protein interaction network, which is fundamentally a huge progress " Emili said he is also the chair of the Ontario Institute of biomarkers for disease management and a professor of molecular genetics The study found that since the advent of primitive cells a billion years ago, and before animal life appeared on earth, thousands of protein relationships have remained unchanged "In terms of protein distribution, humans are usually the same as other species, which not only proves that we have a common ancestor, but also has practical significance in studying multiple diseases on the basis of genomics and how these diseases exist in different species." Said Marcotte This map has been shown to be useful in identifying possible causes of human disease, such as a newly discovered molecular machine called commander, which consists of twelve single proteins It has been found that some people with mental retardation have genes encoding some components of commander, but the mechanism of these proteins is not clear Because commander exists in the cells of all animals, postgraduate fantu is destroying the protein components in tadpoles, revealing the abnormal location of brain cells in the embryonic development stage, and providing a possibility for complex human origin problems "With thousands of protein interactions, our map will help people to study the multiple connections between protein interactions and human diseases, which is our research direction in the next few years." Dr Emili concluded.