Researchers have identified hundreds of tiny proteins, known as micropeptides, that appear to be encoded by this large class of RNAs. Many are associated with specific stages of cancer progression, pointing to a previously underexplored layer of cancer biology that could improve scientists’ understanding of how tumors develop and spread.
By combining cancer genomics data from nearly 10,000 tumor samples with data derived from ribosome profiling and using artificial intelligence-based structural modeling, the researchers identified 1,782 high-confidence micropeptides encoded by 478 long noncoding RNA genes