SUMMARY: We present PrInCE, an R/Bioconductor package that employs a machine-learning approach to infer protein-protein interaction networks from co-fractionation mass spectrometry (CF-MS) data. Previously distributed as a collection of Matlab scripts, our ground-up rewrite of this software package in an open-source language dramatically improves runtime and memory requirements. We describe several new features in the R implementation, including a test for the detection of co-eluting protein complexes and a method for differential network analysis. PrInCE is extensively documented and fully compatible with Bioconductor classes, ensuring it can fit seamlessly into existing proteomics workflows. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: PrInCE is available from Bioconductor (https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/devel/bioc/html/PrInCE.html). Source code is freely available from GitHub under the MIT license (https://github.com/fosterlab/PrInCE). Support is provided via the GitHub issues tracker (https://github.com/fosterlab/PrInCE/issues). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Elucidating the complete network of protein-protein interactions, or interactome, is a fundamental goal of the post-genomic era, yet existing interactome maps are far from complete. To increase the throughput and resolution of interactome mapping, methods for protein-protein interaction discovery by co-migration have been introduced. However, accurate identification of interacting protein pairs within the resulting large-scale proteomic datasets is challenging. Consequently, most computational pipelines for co-migration data analysis incorporate external genomic datasets to distinguish interacting from non-interacting protein pairs. The effect of this procedure on interactome mapping is poorly understood. Here, we conduct a rigorous analysis of genomic data integration for interactome recovery across a large number of co-migration datasets, spanning diverse experimental and computational methods. We find that genomic data integration leads to an increase in the functional coherence of the resulting interactome maps, but this comes at the expense of a decrease in power to discover novel interactions. Importantly, putative novel interactions predicted by genomic data integration are no more likely to later be experimentally discovered than those predicted from co-migration data alone. Our results reveal a widespread and unappreciated limitation in a methodology that has been widely used to map the interactome of humans and model organisms.

BACKGROUND: An organism's protein interactome, or complete network of protein-protein interactions, defines the protein complexes that drive cellular processes. Techniques for studying protein complexes have traditionally applied targeted strategies such as yeast two-hybrid or affinity purification-mass spectrometry to assess protein interactions. However, given the vast number of protein complexes, more scalable methods are necessary to accelerate interaction discovery and to construct whole interactomes. We recently developed a complementary technique based on the use of protein correlation profiling (PCP) and stable isotope labeling in amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) to assess chromatographic co-elution as evidence of interacting proteins. Importantly, PCP-SILAC is also capable of measuring protein interactions simultaneously under multiple biological conditions, allowing the detection of treatment-specific changes to an interactome. Given the uniqueness and high dimensionality of co-elution data, new tools are needed to compare protein elution profiles, control false discovery rates, and construct an accurate interactome. RESULTS: Here we describe a freely available bioinformatics pipeline, PrInCE, for the analysis of co-elution data. PrInCE is a modular, open-source library that is computationally inexpensive, able to use label and label-free data, and capable of detecting tens of thousands of protein-protein interactions. Using a machine learning approach, PrInCE offers greatly reduced run time, more predicted interactions at the same stringency, prediction of protein complexes, and greater ease of use over previous bioinformatics tools for co-elution data. PrInCE is implemented in Matlab (version R2017a). Source code and standalone executable programs for Windows and Mac OSX are available at https://github.com/fosterlab/PrInCE , where usage instructions can be found. An example dataset and output are also provided for testing purposes. CONCLUSIONS: PrInCE is the first fast and easy-to-use data analysis pipeline that predicts interactomes and protein complexes from co-elution data. PrInCE allows researchers without bioinformatics expertise to analyze high-throughput co-elution datasets.