Why should we care OPA3's protein interactions?
Protein interactions occur when two or more proteins make contact and perform some biological function. There are many different types of proteins and ways that they can interact with each other. It is necessary to study these interactions in order to determine the biological and molecular function of a given protein, such as OPA3. Everything in the cell is connected by interactions, and by understanding the overall network in which OPA3 functions, we have better insight in how it plays a role in ADOA.
Predicted OPA3 protein interactions in Zebrafish
Figure 1. Protein interactions from STRING version 12.0. Pink lines indicate experimentally identified interactions, green indicates text-mining for proteins appear with OPA3 in publications, and black represents proteins that are co-expressed. These interactions are for Danio rerio (Zebrafish).
Discussion
Not many proteins interactions have been studied and confirmed for OPA3. Identifying these proteins could give us insight into what OPA3 does for mitochondrial homeostasis and how the protein network is affected by a mutation in OPA3.
This web page was produced as an assignment for Genetics 564, a capstone course at UW-Madison.
References
[1] STRING https://string-db.org/