Proteins associated with cancer occupy central positions in the protein-interaction network

Sarel J. Fleishman (1), Lewi Stone (2) and Nir Ben-Tal (1)
(1) Department of Biochemistry, Tel Aviv University
(2) Biomathematics Unit, Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University.

Cancer is a complex cellular phenomenon that often involves the loss of regulation. Hypothetically, it should be possible to identify proteins that are involved in cellular regulation according to their positions in the network of interacting proteins. Since a network for humans is not yet available, we used instead the network of interactions in fly, and related human proteins that were implicated in cancer to their orthologs in fly. We find that a measure of the closeness-centrality of a protein within this network is correlated with its propensity tobe involved in cancer, but not in other diseases. Thus, closeness-centrality could be used to identify critical regulatory junctions in molecular networks.