Complete Picture Of A Human Immune Pathway

Understanding how cells receive signals from neighboring cells, hormones and growth factors is fundamental to understanding how they perform their biological role. Within a cell, this communication is achieved through signalling machinery that consists of multiple large protein complexes, containing tens or hundreds of individual proteins. Thus, to understand these processes it is necessary to examine a huge number of interactions at once.

Now, a group from Cellzome has modified a technique first used to examine yeast protein complexes to study the complete set of interactions for the TNFalpha/NF-kappaB immune pathway. Well-known proteins involved in this pathway are used as molecular guide posts to purify and subsequently identify all the protein complexes with which they interact. This provides a comprehensive physical map of the protein interactions involved, which includes hundreds of proteins, many previously unknown.
In contrast to the piecemeal identification of individual components through molecule-by-molecule approaches, this large-scale approach provides a description of the complete pathway in a single system, which is a more realistic representation of the functioning signalling machine. Application of these approaches will accelerate our understanding of other biological systems and facilitate drug discovery.

Author contact:

Giulio Superti-Furga
Cellzome AG
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 137 57 103
E-mail: giulio.superti-furga@cellzome.com

Additional contact for comment on paper:

Sankar Ghosh
Yale University School of Medicine
New Haven, CT
USA
Tel: +1 203 737 4419
E-mail: Sankar.Ghosh@yale.edu

Also available online.

(C) Nature Cell Biology press release.

Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza