Hannenhalli and CBCB Doctoral Student Release New Study Examining Protein Networks and Breast Cancer

Researchers in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB) have published a new study on how any given gene may perform a different function in breast cancer cells—as opposed to healthy cells—due to changes in networks of interacting proteins.

Previous research has shown that a protein produced by a single gene can potentially have different functions in a cell depending on the proteins with which it interacts.

Building on this concept, Sridhar Hannenhalli, a professor of cell biology and molecular genetics, and Sushant Patkar, a second-year doctoral student in computer science, hypothesized that alterations in protein interaction networks in breast cancer cells may change the function of individual genes.

To test this idea, they analyzed protein expression in 1,047 breast cancer tumors and 110 healthy breast tissue samples, using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas project.

Paktar was lead author on the research paper, which was just published in PLOS Computational Biology. Assaf Magen, a fourth-year doctoral student in CBCB, and Roded Sharan, a professor of computer science and a member of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel Aviv University, also contributed to the paper.

Go here to read the full news release.