From The Scientist :
There may be more to the human proteome than previously thought. Some genes are known to have several different alternatively spliced protein variants, but the Scripps Research Institute’s Paul Schimmel and his colleagues have now uncovered almost 250 protein splice variants of an essential, evolutionarily conserved family of human genes. The results were published today (July 17) in Science.
Focusing on the 20-gene family of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases (AARSs), the team captured AARS transcripts from human tissues—some fetal, some adult—and showed that many of these messenger RNAs (mRNAs) were translated into proteins. Previous studies have identified several splice variants of these enzymes that have novel functions, but uncovering so many more variants was unexpected, Schimmel said. Most of these new protein products lack the catalytic domain but retain other AARS non-catalytic functional domains.
“The main point is that a vast new area of biology, previously missed, has been uncovered,” said Schimmel. More.
What say we copyright the expression “than previously thought”?
We won’t charge anybody to use it, but after it’s been used five times in a publication like The Scientist , we’ll insist that they write an editorial explaining why they haven’t come to expect this by now.
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