{"id":942200,"date":"2026-05-06T19:43:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942200\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:43:27","slug":"revealed-the-mysterious-dark-proteins-that-might-play-a-big-role-in-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942200\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: the mysterious \u2018dark\u2019 proteins that might play a big role in biology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

Some proteins (artist\u2019s illustration) are being reclassified in databases as a result of the latest findings.Credit: Christoph Burgstedt\/Getty<\/p>\n

The human genome contains around 20,000 genes that hold instructions for making working proteins, as most genetic databases now indicate. However, some scientists say there might be thousands more \u2018dark proteins\u2019 with unknown but potentially important roles in cells.<\/p>\n

These proteins, the code for which has been translated from portions of the genome that weren\u2019t thought to produce proteins<\/a>, were excluded from official genome and protein counts.<\/p>\n

An effort announced today in Nature1<\/a> gives thousands of these molecules encoded by the human genome an official, new name \u2014 peptideins \u2014 and marks their inclusion in major gene and protein databases used by the life-sciences community.<\/p>\n

Researchers say the rebranding will bring much-needed attention and effort to working out what different peptideins do in cells. Some have been implicated in diseases including childhood cancers, as well as in basic cellular functions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Dark proteins\u2019 hiding in our cells could hold clues to cancer and other diseases<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But what most of them do is unknown, although there is some evidence that many peptideins \u2014 previously called microproteins or non-canonical, \u2018dark\u2019 proteins \u2014 are cellular by-products without a clear function.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a major breakthrough,\u201d says Christoph Dietrich, a bioinformatician at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. \u201cThese microproteins have the potential to really open up a new wave of research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Short and mysterious<\/p>\n

Dark proteins tend to be very short in amino acid length and lack evolutionary relatives in other organisms, which is part of the reason they have been omitted from protein-coding gene and proteome databases. In many cases, they are encoded by genes that are very near to, or in some cases overlapping with known, protein-coding genes.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s Nature paper, a new effort called the TransCODE Consortium analysed experimental data on thousands of potential dark proteins. Starting with a list of 7,264 DNA sequences suspected to encode dark proteins, the consortium found that just 15 had enough experimental support to be considered for official catalogues of protein-coding genes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Move over, DNA: ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity\u2019s history<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Portions of thousands more could be detected in cells, but the experimental evidence was less strong; their functions were almost entirely unknown. These were dubbed peptideins, a portmanteau of peptide \u2014 a short stretch of amino acids \u2014 and protein.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s made of amino acids, but we don\u2019t know what it does in terms of function. We don\u2019t necessarily know that it does anything at this point. But we know it exists,\u201d says Jonathan Mudge, a bioinformatician who works on the GENCODE database of protein-coding genes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory\u2019s European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK, and a consortium member.<\/p>\n

Biology\u2019s dwarf planets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some proteins (artist\u2019s illustration) are being reclassified in databases as a result of the latest findings.Credit: Christoph Burgstedt\/Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,3965,3966,25997,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-942200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","10":"tag-multidisciplinary","11":"tag-proteomics","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116529346081337553","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}