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 is identified by mass spectrometric methods.

An interaction is inferred from the biochemical effect of one protein upon another, for example, GTP-GDP exchange activity or phosphorylation of a substrate by a kinase. The bait protein executes the activity on the substrate hit protein. A Modification value is recorded for interactions of this type with the possible values Phosphorylation, Ubiquitination, Sumoylation, Dephosphorylation, Methylation, Prenylation, Acetylation, Deubiquitination, Proteolytic Processing, Glucosylation, Nedd(Rub1)ylation, Deacetylation, No Modification, Demethylation.

An interaction is detected between two proteins using chemically reactive or photo-activatable cross-linking reagents that covalently link amino acids in close proximity, followed by mass spectrometry analysis to identify the linked peptides (reviewed in PMID 37406423, 37104977). Experiments may be carried with live cells or cell lysates in which all proteins are expressed at endogenous levels (e.g. PMID 34349018, 35235311) or with recombinant proteins (e.g., PMID 28537071).