Dissecting the Characteristics and Dynamics of Human Protein Complexes at Transcriptome Cascade Using RNA-Seq Data

PLoS One. 2013 Jun 18;8(6):e66521. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066521. Print 2013.

Abstract

Human protein complexes play crucial roles in various biological processes as the functional module. However, the expression features of human protein complexes at the transcriptome cascade are poorly understood. Here, we used the RNA-Seq data from 16 disparate tissues and four types of human cancers to explore the characteristics and dynamics of human protein complexes. We observed that many individual components of human protein complexes can be generated by multiple distinct transcripts. Similar with yeast, the human protein complex constituents are inclined to co-express in diverse tissues. The dominant isoform of the genes involved in protein complexes tend to encode the complex constituents in each tissue. Our results indicate that the protein complex dynamics not only correlate with the presence or absence of complexes, but may also be related to the major isoform switching for complex subunits. Between any two cancers of breast, colon, lung and prostate, we found that only a few of the differentially expressed transcripts associated with complexes were identical, but 5-10 times more protein complexes involved in differentially expressed transcripts were common. Collectively, our study reveals novel properties and dynamics of human protein complexes at the transcriptome cascade in diverse normal tissues and different cancers.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Proteins / genetics
  • Proteins / metabolism*
  • Sequence Analysis, RNA / methods*
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • Proteins

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National 973 Key Basic Research Program (Grant Nos. 2010CB945401 and 2012CB910400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31240038, 31071162, and 31000590), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (11DZ2260300) and the Graduate School of East China Normal University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.