0000000000072409
AUTHOR
Gregorio Alanis-lobato
showing 13 related works from this author
CellMap visualizes protein-protein interactions and subcellular localization [version 2; referees: 2 approved]
2018
Many tools visualize protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. The tool introduced here, CellMap, adds one crucial novelty by visualizing PPI networks in the context of subcellular localization, i.e. the location in the cell or cellular component in which a PPI happens. Users can upload images of cells and define areas of interest against which PPIs for selected proteins are displayed (by default on a cartoon of a cell). Annotations of localization are provided by the user or through our in-house database. The visualizer and server are written in JavaScript, making CellMap easy to customize and to extend by researchers and developers.
MIPPIE: the mouse integrated protein–protein interaction reference
2020
Abstract Cells operate and react to environmental signals thanks to a complex network of protein–protein interactions (PPIs), the malfunction of which can severely disrupt cellular homeostasis. As a result, mapping and analyzing protein networks are key to advancing our understanding of biological processes and diseases. An invaluable part of these endeavors has been the house mouse (Mus musculus), the mammalian model organism par excellence, which has provided insights into human biology and disorders. The importance of investigating PPI networks in the context of mouse prompted us to develop the Mouse Integrated Protein–Protein Interaction rEference (MIPPIE). MIPPIE inherits a robust infr…
Protein Interaction Networks and Disease: Highlights of the 3rd Challenges in Computational Biology Meeting
2017
Cellular functions are managed by a complex network of protein interactions, the malfunction of which may derive in disease phenotypes. In spite of the incompleteness and noise present in our current protein interaction maps, computational biologists are making strenuous efforts to extract knowledge from these intricate networks and, through their integration with other types of biological data, expedite the development of novel and more effective treatments against human disorders. The 3rd Challenges in Computational Biology meeting revolved around the Protein Interaction Networks and Disease subject, bringing expert network biologists to the city of Mainz, Germany to debate the current st…
The latent geometry of the human protein interaction network
2017
Abstract Motivation A series of recently introduced algorithms and models advocates for the existence of a hyperbolic geometry underlying the network representation of complex systems. Since the human protein interaction network (hPIN) has a complex architecture, we hypothesized that uncovering its latent geometry could ease challenging problems in systems biology, translating them into measuring distances between proteins. Results We embedded the hPIN to hyperbolic space and found that the inferred coordinates of nodes capture biologically relevant features, like protein age, function and cellular localization. This means that the representation of the hPIN in the two-dimensional hyperboli…
Nuclear inclusions of pathogenic ataxin-1 induce oxidative stress and perturb the protein synthesis machinery
2020
Spinocerebellar ataxia type-1 (SCA1) is caused by an abnormally expanded polyglutamine (polyQ) tract in ataxin-1. These expansions are responsible for protein misfolding and self-assembly into intranuclear inclusion bodies (IIBs) that are somehow linked to neuronal death. However, owing to lack of a suitable cellular model, the downstream consequences of IIB formation are yet to be resolved. Here, we describe a nuclear protein aggregation model of pathogenic human ataxin-1 and characterize IIB effects. Using an inducible Sleeping Beauty transposon system, we overexpressed the ATXN1(Q82) gene in human mesenchymal stem cells that are resistant to the early cytotoxic effects caused by the expr…
A reliable and unbiased human protein network with the disparity filter
2017
AbstractThe living cell operates thanks to an intricate network of protein interactions. Proteins activate, transport, degrade, stabilise and participate in the production of other proteins. As a result, a reliable and systematically generated protein wiring diagram is crucial for a deeper understanding of cellular functions. Unfortunately, current human protein networks are noisy and incomplete. Also, they suffer from both study and technical biases: heavily studied proteins (e.g. those of pharmaceutical interest) are known to be involved in more interactions than proteins described in only a few publications. Here, we use the experimental evidence supporting the interaction between protei…
CellMap visualizes protein-protein interactions and subcellular localization
2018
Many tools visualize protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. The tool introduced here, CellMap, adds one crucial novelty by visualizing PPI networks in the context of subcellular localization, i.e. the location in the cell or cellular component in which a PPI happens. Users can upload images of cells and define areas of interest against which PPIs for selected proteins are displayed (by default on a cartoon of a cell). Annotations of localization are provided by the user or through our in-house database. The visualizer and server are written in JavaScript, making CellMap easy to customize and to extend by researchers and developers.
Assessing the reliability of gene expression measurements in very-low-numbers of human monocyte-derived macrophages
2019
Abstract Tumor-derived primary cells are essential for in vitro and in vivo studies of tumor biology. The scarcity of this cellular material limits the feasibility of experiments or analyses and hence hinders basic and clinical research progress. We set out to determine the minimum number of cells that can be analyzed with standard laboratory equipment and that leads to reliable results, unbiased by cell number. A proof-of-principle study was conducted with primary human monocyte-derived macrophages, seeded in decreasing number and constant cell density. Gene expression of cells stimulated to acquire opposite inflammatory states was analyzed by quantitative PCR. Statistical analysis indicat…
Detection of condition-specific marker genes from RNA-seq data with MGFR
2019
The identification of condition-specific genes is key to advancing our understanding of cell fate decisions and disease development. Differential gene expression analysis (DGEA) has been the standard tool for this task. However, the amount of samples that modern transcriptomic technologies allow us to study, makes DGEA a daunting task. On the other hand, experiments with low numbers of replicates lack the statistical power to detect differentially expressed genes. We have previously developed MGFM, a tool for marker gene detection from microarrays, that is particularly useful in the latter case. Here, we have adapted the algorithm behind MGFM to detect markers in RNA-seq data. MGFR groups s…
HIPPIE v2.0: Enhancing meaningfulness and reliability of protein-protein interaction networks
2016
The increasing number of experimentally detected interactions between proteins makes it difficult for researchers to extract the interactions relevant for specific biological processes or diseases. This makes it necessary to accompany the large-scale detection of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) with strategies and tools to generate meaningful PPI subnetworks. To this end, we generated the Human Integrated Protein-Protein Interaction rEference or HIPPIE (http://cbdm.uni-mainz.de/hippie/). HIPPIE is a one-stop resource for the generation and interpretation of PPI networks relevant to a specific research question. We provide means to generate highly reliable, context-specific PPI networks …
Visualizing Human Protein‐Protein Interactions and Subcellular Localizations on Cell Images Through CellMap
2020
Visualizing protein data remains a challenging and stimulating task. Useful and intuitive visualization tools may help advance biomolecular and medical research; unintuitive tools may bar important breakthroughs. This protocol describes two use cases for the CellMap (http://cellmap.protein.properties) web tool. The tool allows researchers to visualize human protein-protein interaction data constrained by protein subcellular localizations. In the simplest form, proteins are visualized on cell images that also show protein-protein interactions (PPIs) through lines (edges) connecting the proteins across the compartments. At a glance, this simultaneously highlights spatial constraints that prot…
Evolutionary Study of Disorder in Protein Sequences
2020
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) contain regions lacking intrinsic globular structure (intrinsically disordered regions, IDRs). IDPs are present across the tree of life, with great variability of IDR type and frequency even between closely related taxa. To investigate the function of IDRs, we evaluated and compared the distribution of disorder content in 10,695 reference proteomes, confirming its high variability and finding certain correlation along the Euteleostomi (bony vertebrates) lineage to number of cell types. We used the comparison of orthologs to study the function of disorder related to increase in cell types, observing that multiple interacting subunits of protein comple…
Protein-protein interactions can be predicted using coiled coil co-evolution patterns
2016
AbstractProtein-protein interactions are sometimes mediated by coiled coil structures. The evolutionary conservation of interacting orthologs in different species, along with the presence or absence of coiled coils in them, may help in the prediction of interacting pairs. Here, we illustrate how the presence of coiled coils in a protein can be exploited as a potential indicator for its interaction with another protein with coiled coils. The prediction capability of our strategy improves when restricting our dataset to highly reliable, known protein-protein interactions. Our study of the co-evolution of coiled coils demonstrates that pairs of interacting proteins can be distinguished from no…