Pan-cancer mapping of differential protein-protein interactions

Deciphering the variations in the protein interactome is required to reach a systems-level understanding of tumorigenesis. To accomplish this task, we have considered the clinical and transcriptome data on >6000 samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas for 12 different cancers. Utilizing the gene expression levels as a proxy, we have identified the differential protein-protein interactions in each cancer type and presented a differential view of human protein interactome among the cancers. We clearly demonstrate that a certain fraction of proteins differentially interacts in the cancers, but there was no general protein interactome profile that applied to all cancers. The analysis also provided the characterization of differentially interacting proteins (DIPs) representing significant changes in their interaction patterns during tumorigenesis. In addition, DIP-centered protein modules with high diagnostic and prognostic performances were generated, which might potentially be valuable in not only understanding tumorigenesis, but also developing effective diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment strategies.