Research article

Defining a Modular Signalling Network from the Fly Interactome

Anaïs Baudot^1,3 , Jean-Baptiste Angelelli² , Alain Guénoche² , Bernard Jacq¹ and Christine Brun¹

¹Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille-Luminy (IBDML), UMR6216, CNRS/Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France

²Institut de Mathématiques de Luminy (IML), UMR6206, CNRS/Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France

³Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Structural Biology and Biocomputing, Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3 E-28029 Madrid, Spain

author email corresponding author email

BMC Systems Biology 2008, 2:45doi:10.1186/1752-0509-2-45

Published:	19 May 2008

Abstract

Background

Signalling pathways relay information by transmitting signals from cell surface receptors to intracellular effectors that eventually activate the transcription of target genes. Since signalling pathways involve several types of molecular interactions including protein-protein interactions, we postulated that investigating their organization in the context of the global protein-protein interaction network could provide a new integrated view of signalling mechanisms.

Results

Using a graph-theory based method to analyse the fly protein-protein interaction network, we found that each signalling pathway is organized in two to three different signalling modules. These modules contain canonical proteins of the signalling pathways, known regulators as well as other proteins thereby predicted to participate to the signalling mechanisms. Connections between the signalling modules are prominent as compared to the other network's modules and interactions within and between signalling modules are among the more central routes of the interaction network.

Conclusion

Altogether, these modules form an interactome sub-network devoted to signalling with particular topological properties: modularity, density and centrality. This finding reflects the integration of the signalling system into cell functioning and its important role connecting and coordinating different biological processes at the level of the interactome.