6/6/2019

A webserver to study the protein networks perturbed in diseases

Researchers from the UPF, IMIM and UVIC have developed the website GUILDify to study the molecular environment of the proteins involved in diseases. The website is a promising tool to study the molecular mechanisms underlying a disease, to understand the relationships between two diseases and to propose potential drugs for their treatment.

The website GUILDify has been developed at the Structural Bioinformatics Group (SBI) led by Prof. Baldo Oliva with the objective to study the protein interactions involved in a disease. When accessing the website, the user finds an input box to introduce any disease name and the species of the interactome (human, mouse, rat...). After introducing the disease, GUILDify provides the user with a list of proteins whose corresponding genes are likely to be mutated when the disease occurs. The gene mutations are obtained from DisGeNET, a database of genes associated to human diseases. GUILDify uses these proteins as seeds for an algorithm that searches for the proteins in the interactome that are more connected to them. In the end, the user obtains the protein interactions that are more likely to cause the disease and a list of the biological functions affected.

Quim Aguirre, PhD student at the Structural Bioinformatics Group (SBI) of GRIB, behind this project, tells us all about it in an article on the El·lipse website.