An Overview of Current Methods to Confirm Protein-Protein Interactions

BACKGROUND: The research field of protein-protein interactions is interdisciplinary and specialized field that spans all aspects of biology, physics and chemistry. Therefore, in order to dis-cuss the protein-protein interaction in detail and rigorously, it is desirable to integrate knowledge and methods of many related fields including boundary areas such as biochemistry, biophysics and physi-cal chemistry in addition to biology, physics and chemistry. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this review is to overview current methods to confirm protein-protein inter-actions. Furthermore, I discuss future prospects of methodology based on current status. RESULTS: It is often necessary to integrate, combine and validate multiple results from various methods to understand protein-protein interactions in detail. CONCLUSION: It might be desirable for the addition of tags, labeling, and immobilization to solid phas-es to be unnecessary, and to obtain information on affinity, kinetics, and structure via the analytical method for protein-protein interactions. Therefore, I argue that novel methods based on principles that have already been sufficiently studied in physics or chemistry, but insufficiently applied to the life sciences, should be established to further develop the study of protein-protein interactions.