Rescue of Escherichia coli auxotrophy by de novo small proteins.

ABSTRACT: Increasing numbers of small proteins with diverse physiological roles are being identified and characterized in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems, but the origins and evolution of these proteins remain unclear. Recent genomic sequence analyses in several organisms suggest that new functions encoded by small open reading frames (sORFs) may emerge de novo from noncoding sequences. However, experimental data demonstrating if and how randomly generated sORFs can confer beneficial effects to cells are limited. Here, we show that by upregulating hisB expression, de novo small proteins (≤50 amino acids in length) selected from random sequence libraries can rescue Escherichia coli cells that lack the conditionally essential SerB enzyme. The recovered small proteins are hydropho

SUBMITTER: Babina AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10065794 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature