Microproteins: a 3D protein structure prediction analysis

Abstract

Microproteins are a novel and expanding group of small proteins encoded by less than 100–150 codons that are translated from small open reading frames (smORFs). It has been shown that smORFs and their corresponding microproteins make up a sizable fraction of the genome and proteome, but very little information on microproteins’ structural features exists in the literature. In this paper, we present the results of analyzing the predicted structures of 44 microproteins. The results show that this set of microproteins have a different amino acid composition profiles, similar structural characteristics and fewer small-molecule ligand binding sites than regular proteins.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Gene ontology
• ligand binding sites
• microproteins
• protein structure
• protein structure prediction

Disclosure statement

The authors do not have any conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partially supported by the Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science funded by NCATS award 1ULTR002538, the National Library of Medicine Training grant T15 LM00712418, and University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunities (UROP) scholar award. Computer resources were provided by the University of Utah Center for High-Performance Computing, which has been partially funded by the NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant 1S10OD02164401A1.