Why interaction maps need context

A map is a measurement

A protein interaction map is a way to ask which molecular relationships an assay can detect. That makes it useful, and it gives it boundaries. A detected pair is evidence for an interaction under the conditions of measurement. An absent pair may reflect biology, assay sensitivity, or the particular representation used to make the measurement.

Much of my research has focused on making these measurements scalable through sequencing. Scale changes which questions are practical. It also makes the choices in an assay more consequential: a small systematic bias can affect thousands of relationships.

From reference to context

Reference networks give researchers a shared language for proposing and comparing hypotheses. But the biological systems they describe are not static. Environment, expression, and cellular state influence which interactions matter and when. A reference map and a map across conditions serve different purposes.

This is why I am interested in interaction dynamics and molecular recording. The aim is to connect a measurement with its context, so that we can ask how a system changes rather than only what appears together in a snapshot. Work on environmental protein interaction dynamics remains in preparation.

What makes a map useful

Useful maps invite follow-up. Independent measurements can test a proposed relationship, and an experiment can ask whether that relationship explains a phenotype. A map does not need to contain a complete mechanism to be valuable. It needs to make the next question sharper.