DIP, the Database of Interacting Proteins: a research tool for studying cellular networks of protein interactions

The Database of Interacting Proteins (DIP: http://dip.doe-mbi.ucla.edu) is a database that documents experimentally determined protein-protein interactions. It provides the scientific community with an integrated set of tools for browsing and extracting information about protein interaction networks. As of September 2001, the DIP catalogs similar to11 000 unique interactions among 5900 proteins from >80 organisms; the vast majority from yeast, Helicobacter pylori and human. Tools have been developed that allow users to analyze, visualize and integrate their own experimental data with the information about protein-protein interactions available in the DIP database.