The underlying code of human life — protein map will be rewritten in an unprecedented way. In the latest issue of nature, an international team of some of the world’s leading scientific institutions reports the results of a major study showing that scientists have discovered a previously overlooked“Dark zone” in DNA, more than 1,700 new microscopic proteins have been unearthed. This breakthrough not only breaks the long-standing“Binary cognition” in biology, but also opens up a new breakthrough for the study of disease mechanisms and the development of targeted drugs for serious diseases such as cancer.
In the past, the scientific community’s interpretation of the human genome has been based on black-and-white“Dualism”: a sequence of DNA is either coded for a protein with a specific function or regarded as useless junk. However, this time, through massive data analysis, an international team including the Princess Maximus Pediatric Oncology Center in the Netherlands, the University of Michigan in the United States, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and many other institutions, to look at fragments of DNA that had previously been judged useless. They were surprised to find that more than a quarter of the genetic sequences in these“Dark regions” produced actual protein-like molecules.
Because they are so much smaller than regular proteins, the scientists named them microproteins. These newly discovered microproteins have few relatives in the gene database, and their structures are extremely lean, with most consisting of fewer than 50 basic units, unlike traditional large proteins.
Faced with these mysterious molecules, scientists for the first time put forward a new concept-peptide, which is between“Completely useless” and“Mature protein”. This means that the blueprint for life is not simply to be or not to be, but there is a vast transitional zone waiting to be awakened. It is possible that these peptides may be formally accepted as members of the human protein family at any time, provided sufficient evidence of their function accumulates in the future.
These seemingly small discoveries have the potential to revolutionize medicine. In subsequent tests, using advanced genetic technology, the scientists pinpointed six of the key peptides that hold the most promise. Experiments have shown that up to 85 per cent of cancer cells lose their ability to survive when the manufacturing instructions for these peptides are turned off. In addition, these microproteins can also act as the radar of the immune system and be pushed to the cell surface, making them extremely ideal new targets for cancer immunotherapy.
At present, all the data of these 1700 new microproteins have been open-sourced to the global academic community.
[ editor-in-chief highlights ]
Our understanding of the Code of life is gradually moving towards“Dark zone exploration”. By turning genomic waste into a treasure trove of thousands of functional molecules, scientists have opened up a whole new dimension to proteomics. It means that precision medicine is about to enter a new era with micromolecules as the cutting edge, which will greatly improve the efficiency of translation from basic research to clinical drugs. Now, the scientific community generally believes that this achievement is not only a cognitive leap in basic biology, but also a treasure map for future drug development, it could lead to a new wave of cancer vaccines and cell therapies.