Using Protein–Protein Interaction to Estimate the Significance of Membrane Proteins to Cancer Pathways

• Main Authors: Han-Wen Hu, 胡瀚文
• Other Authors: Kun-Pin Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70843671231562160637

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 生物醫學資訊研究所 === 102 === Membrane proteins play an important role in cancer cells. Aberrant membrane protein may lead cell to have uncontrolled proliferative behaviors such as migration and invasion. Popular pathway databases collect cancer related pathways which representing our best knowledge in the molecular level for cancer mechanisms. However, few of these pathways introduce distinctive routes from the cell surface to the nucleus. The connections between membrane proteins and well-known cancer pathways are essential for us to understand how membrane proteins involve in signaling transduction and further influence the mechanism generating cancers. In order to connect membrane proteins to the cancer related pathways, we make use of protein--protein interactions (PPIs) to construct possible paths being taken. There would be multiple paths from the membrane protein to the target cancer pathway, we use the shortest path algorithm to find the path of the highest probability. We suggest that, if the membrane protein dose influence the target cancer pathway, there will exist such a path of a high probability to connect the membrane protein and the target pathway. We verify our hypothesis using two approaches. On one hand, we confirm that the cancer membrane protein indeed has a higher probability to cancer pathways rather to other pathways. On the other hand, we find that the cancer membrane protein, comparing to other membrane proteins, has a higher probability to cancer pathways. In this way, we can use the probability to evaluate and rank the significance of membrane proteins to cancer pathways. And in a network view, we use higher higher probability paths to predict the regulation between the membrane proteins and target pathway.