InterDB, a Prediction-Oriented Protein Interaction Database for C. elegans

Abstract. Protein-protein interactions are critical to many biological processes, extending from the formation of cellular macromolecular struc-tures and enzymatic complexes to the regulation of signal transduction pathways. With the availability of complete genome sequences, several groups have begun large-scale identication and characterization of such interactions, relying mostly on high-throughput two-hybrid systems. We collaborate with one such group, led by Marc Vidal, whose aim is the construction of a protein-protein interaction map for C. elegans. In this paper we rst describe WISTdb, a database designed to store the inter-action data generated in Marc Vidal’s laboratory. We then describe In-terDB, a multi-organism prediction-oriented database of protein-protein interactions. We nally discuss our current approaches, based on induc-tive logic programming and on a data mining technique, for extracting predictive rules from the collected data. 1 The Biological Problem: Protein-Protein Interaction