Fig. 2.—

Redundancy explains nonessential genes in largely essential complexes. (A) Cartoon example of redundancy within a protein complex. Red circles represent essential genes, blue circles represent nonessential genes, and the red edge indicates a redundant relationship. (B) Interactions between the nonessential members of essential complexes are more likely to be synthetic sick than interactions between nonessential members of nonessential complexes (P = 1.9 × 10⁻¹⁵, two sided Fisher’s exact test). Complexes with ≥60% essential genes are considered essential and complexes with <40% essential genes are considered nonessential. Counts above bars indicate the number of synthetic sick interactions over the total number of measured interactions.