NAR Molecular Biology Database Collection entry number 960

http://www.mdc-berlin.de/unihi

Chaurasia G.^1,2, Iqbal Y.¹, Hänig C.², Herzel H.¹, Wanker E.E.² and Futschik M.E.¹

¹Institute for Theoretical Biology, Charité, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
²Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin-Buch, Germany

Contact m.futschik@biologie.hu-berlin.de

Systematic mapping of protein-protein interactions has become a central task of functional genomics. To map the human interactome, several strategies have recently been pursued. The generated interaction datasets are valuable resources for scientists in biology and medicine. However, comparison reveals limited overlap between different interaction networks. This divergence obstructs usability, as researchers have to interrogate numerous heterogeneous datasets to identify potential interaction partners for proteins of interest. To facilitate direct access through a single entry gate, we have started to integrate currently available human protein interaction data in an easily accessible online database. It is called UniHI (Unified Human Interactome) and is available at http://www.mdc-berlin.de/unihi. At present, it is based on 10 major interaction maps derived by computational and experimental methods. It includes more than 150,000 distinct interactions between over 17,000 unique human proteins.

UniHI provides researchers with a flexible integrated tool for finding and using comprehensive information about the human interactome. It enables the assembly of comprehensive lists of protein interactions and flexible network-orientated searching. UniHI allows identification of network structures which would not be detectable if single maps were analyzed separately. For highly targeted search, UniHI offers several tools to specify the displayed interactions. Also, scores for quality assessment are given based on co-annotation and co-expression of the interacting proteins. Various hyperlinks to other databases allow users to follow-up results retrieved in UniHI.
Finally, extensive statistical analysis was performed regarding network structure and functional annotation of integrated datasets. This allows users a critical assessment of the single maps included in UniHI as well as of UniHI itself. Since the scope of UniHI can be expected to be continuously expanding, these analyses will be regularly repeated and presented on the UniHI webpage.

We would like to acknowledge the support of the German BMBF (NGFN2, KB-P04T03, 01GR0471) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) by the SFB 618 grant.

1. Gautam Chaurasia, Yasir Iqbal, Christian Hänig, Hanspeter Herzel, Erich E. Wanker and Matthias E. Futschik (2007) UniHI: An Entry Gate to the Human Protein Interactome. Nucleic Acids Res. 35: in press.

Go to the abstract in the NAR 2007 Database Issue.

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