Mysterious microproteins have major implications for human disease

Very recommendable! Microproteins (up to 100 amino acids) could become a new, very promising research area! 


Article also describes how difficult it was to tag the microprotein PIGBOS with a florescent protein. The researchers discovered "As they mapped PIGBOS’ location ... sits on the outer membrane of the mitochondria ... They were surprised to see PIGBOS interacting with a protein called CLCC1, which is part of an organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). ... The researchers found that PIGBOS actually communicates with CLCC1 to regulate stress in the ER. Without PIGBOS, the ER is more likely to experience stress, which leads to a chain of events where the cell tries to clear out harmful misshapen proteins (called the unfolded protein response). If the cell fails to dispose of these proteins, it will initiate a self-destruct sequence and die." 

Those kind of interactions between cell organelles have rarely been studied before.


Mysterious microproteins have major implications for human disease - Salk Institute for Biological Studies: LA JOLLA—As the tools to study biology improve, researchers are beginning to uncover details into microproteins, small components that appear to be key to some cellular processes, including those involved with cancer. Proteins are made up of chains of linked amino acids and the average human protein contains around 300 amino acids. Meanwhile, microproteins have fewer than 100 amino acids.