Premium
Are non‐functional, unfolded proteins (‘junk proteins’) common in the genome?
Author(s) -
Lovell Simon C
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/s0014-5793(03)01223-7
Subject(s) - genome , biology , unfolded protein response , computational biology , dna , genetics , dna sequencing , noncoding dna , gene
It has recently been shown that many proteins are unfolded in their functional state. In addition, a large number of stretches of protein sequences are predicted to be unfolded. It has been argued that the high frequency of occurrence of these predicted unfolded sequences indicates that the majority of these sequences must also be functional. These sequences tend to be of low complexity. It is well established that certain types of low‐complexity sequences are genetically unstable, and are prone to expand in the genome. It is possible, therefore, that in addition to these well‐characterised functional unfolded proteins, there are a large number of unfolded proteins that are non‐functional. Analogous to ‘junk DNA’ these protein sequences may arise due to physical characteristics of DNA. Their high frequency may reflect, therefore, the high probability of expansion in the genome. Such ‘junk proteins’ would not be advantageous, and may be mildly deleterious to the cell.