Abstract
Understanding key protein-protein interaction network mediated by genes responsive to biotic and abiotic stress could help to understand the functional modules and network topologies driven genes responsive to stresses. It still remains to be an open question whether distinct protein-protein interaction networks have functional or regulatory role in mediating abiotic or biotic stress response in plants. To address this question we compiled abscisic acid responsive genes from Stress-responsive TranscrIption Factor DataBase (version 2; STIFDB2); derived protein-protein interaction network mediated by the genes from STRING database and performed biological network analyses using Cytoscape plugins. We have used Molecular Complex Detection algorithm for deriving highly connected module from the abscisic acid responsive network. Biological Network Gene Ontology tool was used to derive functional enrichment of abscisic acid responsive interaction network using GOSlim_Plants ontology. GraphletCounter was used to identify graph motifs in the network and NetworkAnalyzer was used to compute various network topological parameters. We found 26S proteasome subunits as a highly clustered module using Molecular Complex Detection algorithm. Enrichment analysis indicates that several biological processes terms including “flower development” are associated with the network. Results from this case study can be used to understand network properties of abiotic stress responsive genes and gene products in a model plant system.
