The neglected giants: Uncovering the prevalence and functional groups of huge proteins in proteomes.

ABSTRACT: An often-overlooked aspect of biology is formed by the outliers of the protein length distribution, specifically those proteins with more than 5000 amino acids, which we refer to as huge proteins (HPs). By examining UniprotKB, we discovered more than 41 000 HPs throughout the tree of life, with the majority found in eukaryotes. Notably, the phyla with the highest propensity for HPs are Apicomplexa and Fornicata. Moreover, we observed that certain bacteria, such as Elusimicrobiota or Planctomycetota, have a higher tendency for encoding HPs, even more than the average eukaryote. To investigate if these macro-polypeptides represent "real" proteins, we explored several indirect metrics. Additionally, orthology analyses reveals thousands of clusters of homologous sequences of HPs, revealing fun

SUBMITTER: Amaral AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11573180 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature