Expanding the human proteome with microproteins and peptideins

Van Heesch et al. (2026) report the findings of the TransCODE Consortium in a landmark Nature study that systematically maps protein-level evidence for non-canonical open reading frames (ncORFs) across the human proteome. Analysing 95,520 proteomics experiments, the consortium shows that approximately 25% of 7,264 ncORFs produce detectable peptides, substantially expanding the known human proteome. The authors introduce the concept of “peptideins”, microproteins encoded by ncORFs with indeterminate but potentially functional roles, and develop a new evolutionary analysis framework (ORF relative branch length, ORBL) to assess their conservation. One peptidein derived from the OLMALINC long non-coding RNA is shown to have a pan-essential cellular phenotype, demonstrating that Ribo-seq-guided ncORF discovery translates into biologically meaningful targets.

Search all posts

Popular news & events

Knowledge-for-Growth-2026_OHMX.bio

Tags

Do you have questions about the Knowledge for Growth (KfG)?

Fill out the form below and our experts will get back to you as soon as possible!

Search all posts

Popular news & events

Tags