No simple dependence between protein evolution rate and the number of protein-protein interactions: only the most prolific interactors tend to evolve slowly

Table 2 Statistical significance of the differences in evolutionary rates between groups of proteins with different numbers of interactions.

Bin (# interactions) comparisons ^a	P^b
S. cerevisiae – S. pombe
41 – 60 vs. 1 – 40	8.3 × 10^-4
31 – 60 vs. 1 – 30	2.4 × 10^-2
21 – 60 vs. 1 – 20	1.7 × 10^-4
H. pylori 26695 – H. pylori J99
21 – 55 vs. 1 – 20	1.5 × 10^-1
15 – 55 vs. 1 – 14	1.8 × 10^-1
11 – 55 vs. 1 – 10	3.2 × 10^-1
H. pylori 26695 – C. jejuni
21 – 47 vs. 1 – 20	9.8 × 10^-1
11 – 47 vs. 1 – 10	5.1 × 10^-1

^a Orthologous pairs of proteins were placed into bins based on the number of protein-protein interactions (Figure 3). ^b P-value for the Student's ttest comparing the mean evolutionary rates between orthologs for bins with distinct ranges in the number of protein-protein interactions.

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