Scientists Have Found Hidden Microproteins That Affect Health

Scientists Have Found Hidden Microproteins That Affect Health

For decades, scientists have studied only large proteins responsible for the structure of muscles, enzymes and hormones. But it turned out that thousands of microproteins are hidden further – tiny molecules that can control the most important processes in the body.

These are very small proteins – less than 150 amino acids against thousands in ordinary ones. They are encoded in “garbage DNA”, which was previously considered useless. However, these toddlers can affect cancer, including lung tumors, Alzheimer’s disease, and metabolism.

For a long time, microprockets could not be detected because of the size — standard methods simply did not notice them – and the complexity of prediction – not all DNA fragments pointing to these microproques really work.

“Most proteins in our body are well known, but recent findings show that we are missing in a thousand small, hidden proteins called microproteins encoded by unnoticed areas of our genome.”

Alan Sagatelan Professor and Head of the Department of Dr. Frederick Paulsen at the Salk Institute

To do this, scientists from the Salk Institute have created an artificial intelligence that is able to analyze genetic databases, find smORF – sections of DNA potentially encoding microprockets – and weed out “dummy”, leaving only biologically significant. The study was published in the journal BMC Methods.

Using ShortStop – so they called AI, to the data on lung cancer, scientists have discovered 210 candidates for microproteins. And only one confirmed, which was more active in tumor tissues than in healthy tissues. It can become a marker for diagnosis or a target for drugs.

Further, the researchers plan to find microproteins in other diseases and develop drugs that will target these molecules.

Source: Scientists Have Found Hidden Microproteins That Affect Health

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