page_title: Protein function prediction
section_title: Network-based methods
hierarchical_section_title: Protein function prediction / Function prediction methods / Network-based methods
caption_attribution_description: English: Protein-protein interaction network visualized by STRING
context_page_description: Protein function prediction methods are techniques that bioinformatics researchers use to assign biological or biochemical roles to proteins. These proteins are usually ones that are poorly studied or predicted based on genomic sequence data. These predictions are often driven by data-intensive computational procedures. Information may come from nucleic acid sequence homology, gene expression profiles, protein domain structures, text mining of publications, phylogenetic profiles, phenotypic profiles, and protein-protein interaction. Protein function is a broad term: the roles of proteins range from catalysis of biochemical reactions to transport to signal transduction, and a single protein may play a role in multiple processes or cellular pathways.
  Generally, function can be thought of as, "anything that happens to or through a protein". The Gene Ontology Consortium provides a useful classification of functions, based on a dictionary of well-defined terms divided into three main categories of molecular function, biological process and cellular component.
context_section_description: Guilt by association type algorithms may be used to produce a functional association network for a given target group of genes or proteins. These networks serve as a representation of the evidence for shared/similar function within a group of genes, where nodes represent genes/proteins and are linked to each other by edges representing evidence of shared function.
caption: An example protein interaction network, produced through the STRING web resource. Patterns of protein interactions within networks are used to infer function. Here, products of the bacterial trp genes coding for tryptophan synthase are shown to interact with themselves and other, related proteins.
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