A catalog of small proteins from the global microbiome.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39214983.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-51894-6 and PMC identifier 11364881.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Small open reading frames (smORFs) shorter than 100 codons are widespread and perform essential roles in microorganisms, where they encode proteins active in several cell functions, including signal pathways, stress response, and antibacterial activities. However, the ecology, distribution and role of small proteins in the global microbiome remain unknown. Here, we construct a global microbial smORFs catalog (GMSC) derived from 63,410 publicly available metagenomes across 75 distinct habitats and 87,920 high-quality isolate genomes. GMSC contains 965 million non-redundant smORFs with comprehensive annotations. We find that archaea harbor more smORFs proportionally than bacteria. We moreover provide a tool called GMSC-mapper to identify and annotate small proteins from microbial (meta)genomes. Overall, this publicly-available resource demonstrates the immense and underexplored diversity of small proteins.
Medical subject headings
- Microbiota
- Open Reading Frames
- Bacteria
- Metagenome
- Archaea