In discovering the important housekeeping role that a previously overlooked tiny protein plays in cells, scientists highlight that although so-called microproteins may be small, they could have a big impact on human biology.
Researchers from Yale University in New Haven, CT, and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, describe how they found their new microprotein - which they name NoBody (non-annotated P-body dissociating polypeptide) - along with hundreds of others, in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
Co-senior author Sarah Slavoff - assistant professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale - says their findings suggest that microproteins such as NoBody appear to play a role in many biological processes, as well as disease. For instance, many neurological diseases feature groupings of proteins.
Proteins are the workhorses of the cell. Their genetic blueprints are encoded in DNA and obediently carried to the cell's protein-making machinery by molecules called messenger RNA - dubbed mRNA.
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 - where scientists sequenced and mapped all of the genes for building Homo sapiens - we have learned a lot about proteins, their associated genes, and the RNA mechanisms that translate them.
When they studied NoBody more closely, the researchers found that it interacts with proteins that help regulate the recycling of mRNAs at points inside cells known as P-body granules. Clusters of mRNA and proteins that perform the first step in breaking down the mRNAs accumulate at these points.
"The discovery of NoBody and its function in mRNA recycling suggests that at least some of the hundreds of other microproteins that we have found might also be functional, which is an exciting proposition," says Prof. Saghatelian.
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