Torque

Torque identifies analogous protein complexes and pathways across species by searching for connected regions in target protein-protein interaction networks guided by sequence similarity.

Key Features:

• Cross-species querying: Performs querying of protein-protein interaction networks and pathways across species.
• Complex and pathway identification: Identifies analogous complexes or pathways given a set of proteins from a query species.
• Sequence-similarity matching: Matches query proteins to target proteins primarily using sequence similarity.
• Network connectivity constraint: Requires matched proteins to be connected within the target species' protein network.
• Insertion and deletion tolerance: Accommodates insertions and deletions in the matching set to account for variation in protein composition.
• No prior interaction knowledge required: Operates without prior knowledge of the interconnections among the query proteins.
• Large-query support: Accepts queries comprising up to 25 proteins.

Scientific Applications:

• Comparative genomics and systems biology: Identifies conserved network regions across species for comparative analyses.
• Evolutionary biology: Aids investigation of the evolutionary conservation of protein complexes and pathways across organisms.
• Functional genomics: Assists prediction of protein function by detecting conserved interactions and analogous complexes.

Methodology:

Searches the target species' protein-protein interaction network for a connected region corresponding to the query set, using sequence similarity as the primary matching criterion and allowing insertions and deletions.