Projects

Drug Target Identification using Protein-Protein Interaction Networks 

PPI (protein-protein interaction) networks are graphs that represent the physical interactions between proteins within a cell. PPI networks provide a powerful tool for understanding the complex interactions between proteins and for developing new approaches for disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. They have many applications in biology and medicine, including drug discovery, Functional annotation of proteins, Disease gene identification, Biomarker discovery, Systems biology etc,. We focus on PPI networks that can be used to identify potential drug targets by analyzing the network topology and identifying highly connected proteins that are essential for the function of the network. Using the protein-protein interaction data from relevant sources (e.g., BioGRID Database), the network needs to be reconstructed initially using software tools. Essential proteins can be discovered by constructing such host-pathogen protein-protein interaction networks. Finding important proteins in a protein-protein interaction network (PPIN) is useful for both drug development and understanding the functioning of cells.