Bioinformatics Advance Access originally published online on June 9, 2006
Bioinformatics 2006 22(17):2175-2177; doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl287
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NetAlign: a web-based tool for comparison of protein interaction networks


1 Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and School of Life Sciences, University of Science & Technology of China 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China
2 Key Laboratory of Structural Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China
*To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Summary: NetAlign is a web-based tool designed to enable comparative analysis of protein interaction networks (PINs). NetAlign compares a query PIN with a target PIN by combining interaction topology and sequence similarity to identify conserved network substructures (CoNSs), which may derive from a common ancestor and disclose conserved topological organization of interactions in evolution. To exemplify the application of NetAlign, we perform two genome-scale comparisons with (1) the Escherichia coli PIN against the Helicobacter pylori PIN and (2) the Saccharomyces cerevisiae PIN against the Caenorrhabditis elegans PIN. Many of the identified CoNSs correspond to known complexes; therefore, cross-species PIN comparison provides a way for discovery of conserved modules. In addition, based on the species-to-species differences in CoNSs, we reformulate the problems of proteinprotein interaction (PPI) prediction and species divergence from a network perspective.
Availability: http://www1.ustc.edu.cn/lab/pcrystal/NetAlign
Supplementary Data: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Contact: mkteng{at}ustc.edu.cn, lwniu{at}ustc.edu.cn
Received on April 12, 2006; accepted on May 16, 2006