Evidence map›Paper›PMID 23950983›Full record

ArticlePloS one2013

Direct detection of alternative open reading frames translation products in human significantly expands the proteome.

Benoît Vanderperre, Jean-François Lucier, Cyntia Bissonnette, Julie Motard, Guillaume Tremblay, Solène Vanderperre, Maxence Wisztorski, Michel Salzet, François-Michel Boisvert, Xavier Roucou

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 127 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
127citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
7.3field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

127 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 217 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
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  14. The dual-coding gene SLC35A4 protects against oxidative stress.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2025
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  15. Eukaryotic Microproteins.Annual review of biochemistry · 2025
    Review
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  19. Evaluation of Eukaryotic mRNA Coding Potential.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025
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  20. Article

67 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Benoît VanderperreDépartement de biochimie, Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences de la Santé, Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada.
Jean-François Lucier
Cyntia Bissonnette
Julie Motard
Guillaume Tremblay
Solène Vanderperre
Maxence Wisztorski
Michel Salzet
François-Michel Boisvert
Xavier Roucou
Université de Sherbrooke · CAProtéomique, Réponse Inflammatoire et Spectrométrie de Masse · FR

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research MOP-123469Canadian Institutes of Health Research MOP-89881
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

A fully mature mRNA is usually associated to a reference open reading frame encoding a single protein. Yet, mature mRNAs contain unconventional alternative open reading frames (AltORFs) located in untranslated regions (UTRs) or overlapping the reference ORFs (RefORFs) in non-canonical +2 and +3 reading frames. Although recent ribosome profiling and footprinting approaches have suggested the significant use of unconventional translation initiation sites in mammals, direct evidence of large-scale alternative protein expression at the proteome level is still lacking. To determine the contribution of alternative proteins to the human proteome, we generated a database of predicted human AltORFs revealing a new proteome mainly composed of small proteins with a median length of 57 amino acids, compared to 344 amino acids for the reference proteome. We experimentally detected a total of 1,259 alternative proteins by mass spectrometry analyses of human cell lines, tissues and fluids. In plasma and serum, alternative proteins represent up to 55% of the proteome and may be a potential unsuspected new source for biomarkers. We observed constitutive co-expression of RefORFs and AltORFs from endogenous genes and from transfected cDNAs, including tumor suppressor p53, and provide evidence that out-of-frame clones representing AltORFs are mistakenly rejected as false positive in cDNAs screening assays. Functional importance of alternative proteins is strongly supported by significant evolutionary conservation in vertebrates, invertebrates, and yeast. Our results imply that coding of multiple proteins in a single gene by the use of AltORFs may be a common feature in eukaryotes, and confirm that translation of unconventional ORFs generates an as yet unexplored proteome.

Indexed as

Alternative SplicingOpen Reading FramesProtein BiosynthesisProteomeProteomicsAmino Acid SequenceBRCA1 ProteinCell LineComputational BiologyDatabases, GeneticGene ExpressionHumansMolecular Sequence DataPeptide Chain Initiation, TranslationalProtein BindingReproducibility of ResultsBRCA1 ProteinProteome

Identifiers

PMID23950983
PMCPMC3741303
OpenAlexW2040415319

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.