Major objectives of INTERACTION PROTEOME include the establish-ment of a broadly applicable platform of routine methods for the analysis of protein interaction networks in bio-medical research. A multidisciplinary approach will address

- their validation by cell biological, biochemical and biophysical methods.
- their collection in a new type of public database.
- their exploitation and use for in silico simulations of protein-interaction networks.

The innovations generated in INTERACTION PROTEOME will provide the basis for an efficient analysis and systems modelling of fundamental biological processes in health and disease.

INTERACTION PROTEOME will develop novel technology, including a high-end mass spectrometer with extremely large dynamic range, high-density peptide arrays, and improved visualisation technology for light and electron microscopy. (Partners: University Odense, the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, Ghent, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, ThermoElectron (Bremen) GmbH, FEI Electron Optics B.V., Eindhoven, Jerini AG, Berlin).

The novel technologies will be validated with selected model systems of high relevance to medicine and biotechnology. (Partners: Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, GSF-National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Munich, Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Glasgow).

Extensive bioinformatics support is a key element in the project to cope with the massive increase in experimental data on protein interactions obtained using the novel technologies. In particular, the efficient integration of disparate data sets represents a key challenge in proteomics and functional genomics. Therefore, the consortium includes the creator of the only European protein-interactions database, MINT. (Partners: University of Rome, TorVergata, Danish Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Lyngby, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL, Heidelberg).