title: Modeling the topology of protein interaction networks.
abstract: A major issue in biology is the understanding of the interactions between proteins. These interactions can be described by a network, where the proteins are modeled by nodes and the interactions by edges. The origin of these protein networks is not well understood yet. Here we present a two-step model, which generates clusters with the same topological properties as networks for protein-protein interactions, namely, the same degree distribution, cluster size distribution, clustering coefficient, and shortest path length. The biological and model networks are not scale-free but exhibit small-world features. The model allows the fitting of different biological systems by tuning a single parameter.
authors.affiliation: Computational Physics, IfB, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. schnechr@ethz.ch
authors.forename: Christian M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Lucilla
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: de Arcangelis
authors.forename: Hans J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Herrmann
mesh_terms: D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D003196:Computer Graphics; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011336:Probability; D060066:Protein Interaction Maps
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins