Abstract
So far, infectious diseases are still the top global healthcare problem, usually causing serious challenge in medical therapy. The rapid growth of high-throughput microarray and protein-protein interaction PPI data has led to emergence of system mechanism investigation. In order to predict the inter-species protein interactions, we used ortholog-based approach to obtain the rough protein-protein interaction candidates. Based on experimental histological section, simultaneous host and pathogen microarray data, orthologous information and stochastic system model, we have constructed the three stages inter-species and intra-cellular protein interaction network under the infection. Through GO database, we also focus on C. albicans cell-wall-related proteins to investigate the specific inter-species protein interactions by functional clustering method. After constructing the host and pathogen dynamic protein interaction network through protein interaction changes between different infection stages, several C. albicans adhesion hub proteins are found at early stage and hyphal growth-related hub proteins are also obtained for pathogenicity of morphology of pathogen at early and late stages. Several host immune response and several apoptosis-related proteins of infectious process are also investigated for host defense mechanisms. We also predicted some potential inter-species protein interactions in the infectious process. Through this integrated dynamic host-pathogen interaction network, the potential drug target and the C. albicans related pathogenesis could be understood in more detail.