Convergent perturbation of the human domain-resolved interactome by viruses and mutations inducing similar disease phenotypes.

• Main Authors: Yangchun Frank Chen, Yu Xia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2019-02-01
• Series: PLoS Computational Biology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006762
• ISSN: 1553-734X; 1553-7358

An important goal of systems medicine is to study disease in the context of genetic and environmental perturbations to the human interactome network. For diseases with both genetic and infectious contributors, a key postulate is that similar perturbations of the human interactome by either disease mutations or pathogens can have similar disease consequences. This postulate has so far only been tested for a few viral species at the level of whole proteins. Here, we expand the scope of viral species examined, and test this postulate more rigorously at the higher resolution of protein domains. Focusing on diseases with both genetic and viral contributors, we found significant convergent perturbation of the human domain-resolved interactome by endogenous genetic mutations and exogenous viral proteins inducing similar disease phenotypes. Pan-cancer, pan-oncovirus analysis further revealed that domains of human oncoproteins either physically targeted or structurally mimicked by oncoviruses are enriched for cancer driver rather than passenger mutations, suggesting convergent targeting of cancer driver pathways by diverse oncoviruses. Our study provides a framework for high-resolution, network-based comparison of various disease factors, both genetic and environmental, in terms of their impacts on the human interactome.