Identifying Small Proteins by Ribosome Profiling with Stalled Initiation Complexes.

ABSTRACT: Small proteins consisting of 50 or fewer amino acids have been identified as regulators of larger proteins in bacteria and eukaryotes. Despite the importance of these molecules, the total number of small proteins remains unknown because conventional annotation pipelines usually exclude small open reading frames (smORFs). We previously identified several dozen small proteins in the model organism Escherichia coli using theoretical bioinformatic approaches based on sequence conservation and matches to canonical ribosome binding sites. Here, we present an empirical approach for discovering new proteins, taking advantage of recent advances in ribosome profiling in which antibiotics are used to trap newly initiated 70S ribosomes at start codons. This approach led to the identification of

SUBMITTER: Weaver J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6401488 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature