Bacterial Interactomes: Interacting Protein Partners Share Similar Function and Are Validated in Independent Assays More Frequently Than Previously Reported

Numerous affinity purification-mass spectrometry (AP-MS) and yeast two-hybrid screens have each defined thousands of pairwise protein-protein interactions (PPIs), most of which are between functionally unrelated proteins. The accuracy of these networks, however, is under debate. Here, we present an AP-MS survey of the bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris together with a critical reanalysis of nine published bacterial yeast two-hybrid and AP-MS screens. We have identified 459 high confidence PPIs from D. vulgaris and 391 from Escherichia coli. Compared with the nine published interactomes, our two networks are smaller, are much less highly connected, and have significantly lower false discovery rates. In addition, our interactomes are much more enriched in protein pairs that are encoded in the same operon, have similar functions, and are reproducibly detected in other physical interaction assays than the pairs reported in prior studies. Our work establishes more stringent benchmarks for the properties of protein interactomes and suggests that bona fide PPIs much more frequently involve protein partners that are annotated with similar functions or that can be validated in independent assays than earlier studies suggested.