Large-scale protein-protein interaction detection approaches: Past, present and future

Protein-protein interaction elucidation is of immense importance to biology, medicine, and related fields. It is now realized that various diseases such as different types of cancers, Alzheimer disease, etc, require an integrated view of protein interaction networks. To aid in deciphering these networks, a number of methods have been developed including yeast two-hybrid analysis, tandem affinity purification tagging, as well as protein microarray technologies. In this article, we discuss some of the most important trendy and technologies of the past, reflect on their present, and explore some exciting future directions in the field of large-scale protein-protein interaction detection. We argue that the,future of the protein interaction elucidation field lies in the development of novel and/or improved high-throughput techniques that generate reproducible and most importantly, quantitative data.