TulsiPIN: An Interologous Protein Interactome of Ocimum tenuiflorum

Ocimum tenuiflorum, commonly known
as holy basil or tulsi, is globally recognized for its multitude of
medicinal properties. However, a comprehensive study revealing the
complex interplay among its constituent proteins at subcellular level
is still lacking. To bridge this gap, in this work, a genome-scale
interologous protein–protein interaction (PPI) network, TulsiPIN,
is developed using 36 template plants, which consists of 13 660
nodes and 327 409 binary interactions. A high confidence network,
hc-TulsiPIN, consisting of 7719 nodes having 95 532 interactions
is inferred using domain–domain interaction information along
with interolog-based statistics, and its reliability is assessed using
pathway enrichment, functional homogeneity, and protein colocalization
of PPIs. Examination of topological features revealed that hc-TulsiPIN
possesses conventional properties, like small-world, scale-free, and
modular architecture. A total of 1625 vital proteins are predicted
by statistically evaluating hc-TulsiPIN with two ensembles of corresponding
random networks, each consisting of 10 000 realizations of
Erdoős–Rényi and Barabási–Albert
models. Also, numerous regulatory proteins like transcription factors,
transcription regulators, and protein kinases are profiled. Using
36 guide genes participating in 9 secondary metabolite biosynthetic
pathways, a subnetwork consisting of 171 proteins and 612 interactions
was constructed, and 127 of these proteins could be successfully characterized.
Detailed information of TulsiPIN is available at https://cuhpcbbtulsipin.shinyapps.io/tulsipin_v0/.