Controllability in protein interaction networks

Recently, the focus of network research shifted to network controllability, prompting us to determine proteins that are important for the control of the underlying interaction webs. In particular, we determined minimum dominating sets of proteins (MDSets) in human and yeast protein interaction networks. Such groups of proteins were defined as optimized subsets where each non-MDSet protein can be reached by an interaction from an MDSet protein. Notably, we found that MDSet proteins were enriched with essential, cancer-related, and virus-targeted genes. Their central position allowed MDSet proteins to connect protein complexes and to have a higher impact on network resilience than hub proteins. As for their involvement in regulatory functions, MDSet proteins were enriched with transcription factors and protein kinases and were significantly involved in bottleneck interactions, regulatory links, phosphorylation events, and genetic interactions.