Networks: Elucidating Experimental Data by Differential Protein-Protein Interactions

Recently, the pathogenesis of coronary atherosclerosis - a primary cause of cardiovascular disease - studied in a swine model has been investigated by considering in particular the effects of a high cholesterol diet lasting 8 or 16 weeks [1]. The proposed systems medicine approach integrating data of plasma adhesion molecules, cytokines, lipoproteins, tissue proteins and histology allowed for an assessment of their relationships with artery-specific proteins. We send the reader to the seminal paper for experimental and computational details, and also data collection modalities. While macrophage-related proteins were found significantly and positively associated to the atherogenesis-inflammatory disorder, the study of protein connectivity patterns remains to be investigated. This is also a relevant step, because such type of evidence synthesis could lead to signatures of markers. Through the popular tool STRING [2], we aim to inspect protein-protein interaction networks (PIN), i.e. whether they can generate interpretable and testable hypotheses in such a complex experimental context with potential clinical impact.