Whats the difference between a human and a fruit fly?
Fruit flies are dramatically different from humans not in their number of genes, but in the number of protein interactions in their bodies, according to scientists who have developed a new way of estimating the total number of interactions between proteins in any organism. The new research, published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, shows that humans have approximately 10 times more protein interactions than the simple fruit fly, and 20 times as many as simple, single-cell yeast organisms. This contradicts comparisons between the numbers of genes in different organisms, which yield surprising results: humans have approximately 24,000 genes, but fruit flies are not far behind, with approximately 14,000 genes. The interaction between different proteins is behind all physiological systems in the human body. When the body digests food, responds to a change in temperature, or fights off an infection, numerous combinations of protein interactions are
