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Dec 22, 2022

De novo birth of functional microproteins in the human lineage

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, genetics

Human microproteins encoded by small ORFs have been found to be functional. By comparing the corresponding sequences across vertebrate genomes, Vakirlis et al. show that a number of these originated “from scratch” from noncoding sequences, including two very recent cases unique to humans. These cases demonstrate the rapid evolution of genetic novelty.

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