Interaction networks: Lessons from large-scale studies in yeast

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the simplest eukaryotic model organism and has made countless contributions to cell biology. The ease with which it can be genetically manipulated has made it a favourite organism among technologists for developing methods for large-scale analysis based on reverse genetics. Consequently, more genomewide datasets describing aspects of gene and protein biology are available for yeast than for any other organism. This has led to the pioneering of many computational analysis techniques using yeast data. Here, we make a brief survey of yeast physical and genetic interaction networks, highlighting major experimental and computational achievements first described in this organism.