Small World Protein Networks

Professor Seth Grant explains that a small world protein network is a network where all proteins are closely connected.

A small world network is a network where all of the members of that network are only a small number of steps away from each other. And we isolated all of the proteins found in these complexes at the synapse, and mapped their physical interactions with one another, and were surprised to find that each protein is only about 3 steps away from every other protein, which is exactly the property of a small world network.