FlyBase has recently made public an extensive set of high-throughput protein interaction data generated by the Drosophila Protein interaction Mapping (DPiM) project. The DPiM project identifies protein-protein interactions by isolation and mass spectrometric analysis of purified protein complexes associated with individually tagged proteins. FlyBase presents these data as interactions observed for gene pairs, in a new report format. See this example report: Pros29, Prosβ3 Interaction.

The interaction reports may be accessed through QuickSearch on the home page, by selecting "interactions" from the Data Class menu and searching by gene. [This search may also be initiated from the gene report page of the gene of interest, by opening the "Interactions & Pathways" section and the "Physical interactions" sub-section.] {Not Yet ... but soon??}

Each interaction report includes the experimental assay used, the role of each protein in the assay (bait or prey; identity of the bait-tag fusion clone) and a synopsis of the supporting experimental results (peptides identified). Note that the DPiM experiments do not address whether the reported proteins interact directly or indirectly, nor do they identify the specific regions of the polypeptides that are involved in the interaction.

There are links to a collection report, which includes a detailed description of the experimental protocol, and to a "network" display for each gene. Clicking on the "network" link takes you to a graphical display of all the physical interactions reported for that gene, plus interactions between any other pairs (see image at left). By changing the "Interaction Type" the view may be changed to genetic interactions reported in FlyBase.

In the future FlyBase plans to include physical interaction data curated from the literature, and information of this type from additional large scale data sets in our collection of interaction reports.