Bridging Phylogeny and Taxonomy with Protein-protein Interaction
  Networks
Long-Huei Chen Mohana Prasad Sathya Moorthy Pratyaksh Sharma
The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network provides an overview of the
complex biological reactions vital to an organism's metabolism and survival.
Even though in the past PPI network were compared across organisms in detail,
there has not been large-scale research on how individual PPI networks reflect
on the species relationships. In this study we aim to increase our
understanding of the tree of life and taxonomy by gleaming information from the
PPI networks. We successful created (1) a predictor of network statistics based
on known traits of existing species in the phylogeny, and (2) a taxonomic
classifier of organism using the known protein network statistics, whether
experimentally determined or predicted de novo. With the knowledge of protein
interactions at its core, our two models effectively connects two field with
widely diverging methodologies - the phylogeny and taxonomy of species.