ArticlePLoS biology2007
Peptides encoded by short ORFs control development and define a new eukaryotic gene family.
Article in PLoS biology, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 199 papers.
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Who cites it
199 citing papers in PubMed, 367 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Sketching microprotein portraits.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2026Review
- Computational identification and characterization of noncoding RNA-encoded peptides: tools, databases, and in silico strategies.Amino acids · 2026Review
- High-resolution multi-omics enhances prediction and detection of smORF-encoded proteins in the human gut microbiome.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Drosophila melanogaster miPEP8 Regulates Cell Size Through its Interaction With ref(2)P/p62.Molecular & cellular proteomics : MCP · 2026Article
- Pri micropeptide functions as a cell-intrinsic timer controlling the transient phase of cell fate induction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The 'non-conventional' peptidome: A new layer in plant regulatory mechanisms.Plant communications · 2025Review
- Proteogenomics-enabled discovery of novel small open reading frame (sORF)-encoded polypeptides in human and mouse tissues.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
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- Eukaryotic Microproteins.Annual review of biochemistry · 2025Review
- Polished Rice Regulates Maturation but Not Survival of Secondary Cells in Drosophila Male Accessory Gland.Genes to cells : devoted to molecular & cellular mechanisms · 2025Article
- Grand roles for microproteins.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2025Article
- Pervasiveness of Microprotein Function AmongstCells · 2024Article
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- De Novo Genes.Annual review of genetics · 2024Review
- Small ORFs, Big Insights:Cells · 2024Review
- Deciphering the ghost proteome in ovarian cancer cells by deep proteogenomic characterization.Cell death & disease · 2024Article
- Long non-coding RNAs involved inNAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2024Article
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139 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Despite recent advances in developmental biology, and the sequencing and annotation of genomes, key questions regarding the organisation of cells into embryos remain. One possibility is that uncharacterised genes having nonstandard coding arrangements and functions could provide some of the answers. Here we present the characterisation of tarsal-less (tal), a new type of noncanonical gene that had been previously classified as a putative noncoding RNA. We show that tal controls gene expression and tissue folding in Drosophila, thus acting as a link between patterning and morphogenesis. tal function is mediated by several 33-nucleotide-long open reading frames (ORFs), which are translated into 11-amino-acid-long peptides. These are the shortest functional ORFs described to date, and therefore tal defines two novel paradigms in eukaryotic coding genes: the existence of short, unprocessed peptides with key biological functions, and their arrangement in polycistronic messengers. Our discovery of tal-related short ORFs in other species defines an ancient and noncanonical gene family in metazoans that represents a new class of eukaryotic genes. Our results open a new avenue for the annotation and functional analysis of genes and sequenced genomes, in which thousands of short ORFs are still uncharacterised.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.