How Reliable are Experimental Protein–Protein Interaction Data?

Data of protein–protein interactions provide valuable insight into the molecular networks underlying a living cell. However, their accuracy is often questioned, calling for a rigorous assessment of their reliability. The computation offered here provides an intelligible mean to assess directly the rate of true positives in a data set of experimentally determined interacting protein pairs. We show that the reliability of high-throughput yeast two-hybrid assays is about 50%, and that the size of the yeast interactome is estimated to be 10,000–16,600 interactions.