An interaction is inferred when a bait protein is affinity captured from cell extracts by either polyclonal antibody or epitope tag and the associated interaction partner identified by Western blot with a specific polyclonal antibody or second epitope tag. This category is also used if an interacting protein is visualized directly by dye stain or radioactivity. Note that this differs from any co-purification experiment involving affinity capture in that the co-purification experiment involves at least one extra purification step to get rid of potential contaminating proteins.

A Protein-Fragment Complementation Assay (PCA) is a protein-protein interaction assay in which a bait protein is expressed as fusion to one of the either N- or C- terminal peptide fragments of a reporter protein and prey protein is expressed as fusion to the complementary N- or C- terminal fragment of the same reporter protein. Interaction of bait and prey proteins bring together complementary fragments, which can then fold into an active reporter, e.g. the split-ubiquitin assay.

A genetic interaction is inferred when mutation or overexpression of one gene results in enhancement of any phenotype (other than lethality/growth defect) associated with mutation or over expression of another gene.

A genetic interaction is inferred when mutations in separate genes, each of which alone causes a minimal phenotype, result in a significant growth defect under a given condition when combined in the same cell.