Abstract

In this paper, some proteins were determined as potential drug targets for H1N1 influenza A. These proteins were found using three steps: i) determining a set of human proteins that had interactions with the proteins of H1N1 virus, and assigning a weight to each protein; ii) mapping the set of human proteins into the human protein-protein interaction networks; iii) combining the topological properties of the network and the weights of the proteins to determine the score of each node. Eventually, TRAF2 and MAPK9, two nodes with high scores, were regarded as potential drug targets. The results were consistent when different databases were used, and were in agreement with the KEGG pathways to some degree. However, it still needs further study to ascertain whether these potential targets can be novel practical targets applied in the drug design.

Key words: Protein-protein interactions network, drug targets, H1N1 influenza A.