Comment on Yu et al., "High Quality Binary Protein Interaction Map of the Yeast Interactome Network." Science 322, 104 (2008)

Abstract

We test the claim by Yu et al. -- presented in Science 322, 104 (2008) -- that the degree distribution of the yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) protein-interaction network is best approximated by a power law. Yu et al. consider three versions of this network. In all three cases, however, we find the most likely power-law model of the data is distinct from and incompatible with the one given by Yu et al. Only one network admits good statistical support for any power law, and in that case, the power law explains only the distribution of the upper 10% of node degrees. These results imply that there is considerably more structure present in the yeast interactome than suggested by Yu et al., and that these networks should probably not be called "scale free."