Systematic and large-scale two-hybrid screens

The increasing rate at which complete genome sequences become available necessitates rapid and robust methods for investigating the functions of their encoded proteins. Efforts have been made to study protein function by systematically screening large sets of proteins using the two-hybrid method. Analyses of the complete proteomes of baceriophage T7, the mammalian viruses hepatitis C and vaccinia, as well as of several protein complexes including RNA splicing proteins and RNA polymerase III from yeast, have been undertaken. Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been studied extensively by two-hybrid methods, with more than 2500 protein-protein interactions described. Systematic studies on metazoan proteomes are, however, still in their infancy.