The Sudden Emergence of Powerful Miniproteins in Evolution.
A new study has shown that microproteins, previously deemed unimportant, play a key role in human cellular functions and evolutionary development. The research also unveiled the smallest human proteins known, with potential implications for diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancer. The young proteins might also be heavily involved in evolutionary development thanks to comparatively rapid “innovations and adaptations.” The researchers aim to expand the experiments to include many more of the 7,000 recently cataloged microproteins – in the hope that this will reveal many as-yet-undiscovered functions.