Controllability in protein interaction networks

Significance In human and yeast protein interaction datasets we determined minimum dominating sets (MDSets), proteins that play a role in the control of the underlying interaction webs. Such proteins are defined as optimized subsets from where each remaining protein can be immediately reached. Notably, MDSet proteins were enriched with cancer-related and virus-targeted genes. Furthermore, MDSet proteins have a higher impact on network resilience than hub proteins. Indicating their relevance for the controllability of biological networks, we also found a strong involvement in bottleneck interactions, regulatory and phosphorylation events as well as genetic interactions.