Figure 5

Interaction graphs of VAMP2 and RAB3A and their insects homologues. Human vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP)2 and RAB3A are shown as interacting graphs with their high confidence partners according to STRING tool (see Materials and methods). Proteins with close homologs in insects, sharing greater than 75% sequence similarity with a human homolog, are indicated by dark blue; proteins sharing 65% to 74% sequence similarity are indicated by light blue circles (Table 1). Proteins for which homologs are absent in insects are marked by yellow circles, and proteins whose sequences were absent because of missing annotations are marked with gray circles. For details, see Table 1 and Additional data files 2 and 3. Each of the central proteins (in red frame) is shown along its 'network conservation score' (Con Net), which measures the fraction of highly conserved proteins (>65% sequence similarity from insect to human) relative to all proteins in the graph. A quantitative measure for the density of protein-protein interactions in the graph is added (see Materials and methods, below). Note that the graph of VAMP2 is characterized by a high 'network conservation score' and larger 'interaction density' value relative to RAB3A.