在全蛋白质组的尺度上阐释多蛋白复合物的构成成分得到了用于系统性确定蛋白-蛋白相互作用的高吞吐量方法的帮助。在这项研究中，Edward Marcotte及同事，基于对固有可溶大分子复合物的生物化学分级、再通过串联质谱来识别构成成分的方法并行识别来自九个物种的蛋白复合物。他们获得的数据(来自蛔虫、小鼠、海胆、人类、青蛙、苍蝇、海葵、粘菌和酵母)显示，很多复合物在不同物种间是保守的。通过将这些结果与基因组测序信息相结合，本文作者得以能够预测122种真核生物的超过100万个相互作用。

    原文链接：Panorama of ancient metazoan macromolecular complexes

    原文摘要：Macromolecular complexes are essential to conserved biological processes, but their prevalence across animals is unclear. By combining extensive biochemical fractionation with quantitative mass spectrometry, here we directly examined the composition of soluble multiprotein complexes among diverse metazoan models. Using an integrative approach, we generated a draft conservation map consisting of more than one million putative high-confidence co-complex interactions for species with fully sequenced genomes that encompasses functional modules present broadly across all extant animals. Clustering reveals a spectrum of conservation, ranging from ancient eukaryotic assemblies that have probably served cellular housekeeping roles for at least one billion years, ancestral complexes that have accrued contemporary components, and rarer metazoan innovations linked to multicellularity. We validated these projections by independent co-fractionation experiments in evolutionarily distant species, affinity purification and functional analyses. The comprehensiveness, centrality and modularity of these reconstructed interactomes reflect their fundamental mechanistic importance and adaptive value to animal cell systems.