Extensive identification and analysis of conserved small ORFs in animals.

ABSTRACT:

Background

There is increasing evidence that transcripts or transcript regions annotated as non-coding can harbor functional short open reading frames (sORFs). Loss-of-function experiments have identified essential developmental or physiological roles for a few of the encoded peptides (micropeptides), but genome-wide experimental or computational identification of functional sORFs remains challenging.

Results

Here, we expand our previously developed method and present results of an integrated computational pipeline for the identification of conserved sORFs in human, mouse, zebrafish, fruit fly, and the nematode C. elegans. Isolating specific conservation signatures indicative of purifying selection on amino acid (rather than nucleotide) sequence, we identify about 2,000 nove

SUBMITTER: Mackowiak SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4568590 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature