Pimenta Daniel C, Lebrun Ivo
Laboratório de Bioquímica e Biofísica, Instituto Butantan, Avenida Vital Brazil 1500, São Paulo, SP 05503-900, Brazil.
Peptides. 2007 Dec;28(12):2403-10. doi: 10.1016/j.peptides.2007.10.005. Epub 2007 Oct 11.
The proteome originally described the entire set of proteins expressed by a genome, tissue or organism. Subsequently this term was limited to all the expressed proteins at a given time under defined conditions. Hence, specializations such as functional proteome, cancer proteome, liver proteome and so forth have arisen. One particular proteome that has been recently described is the cryptome, a unique subset of already known proteins that has the ability of generating bioactive peptides and proteins when submitted to proteolytic cleavage, rather than the classical processing pathways. This is an idea in agreement with the concept that evolution is not related to the amount of genes or putative proteins that could be secreted by an organism, but to the way these proteins are processed. These 'new' molecules may have related or increased properties when compared to the 'original' molecule or possess completely unrelated biological effects, thus increasing the array of biological roles that can be associated to one given protein (or gene). In this work, we review this recent concept and put it into the toxinology field as well, an area in which the diversity of functional molecules (and roles) is essential for the survival of a given organism.
蛋白质组最初指由基因组、组织或生物体表达的所有蛋白质。随后，该术语被限定为在特定条件下给定时间内所有表达的蛋白质。因此，出现了诸如功能蛋白质组、癌症蛋白质组、肝脏蛋白质组等专门术语。最近描述的一种特殊蛋白质组是隐窝蛋白组，它是已知蛋白质的一个独特子集，当进行蛋白水解切割时，具有产生生物活性肽和蛋白质的能力，而不是通过经典的加工途径。这一观点与进化并非与生物体可分泌的基因或假定蛋白质的数量相关，而是与这些蛋白质的加工方式相关的概念相一致。与“原始”分子相比，这些“新”分子可能具有相关或增强的特性，或者具有完全不相关的生物学效应，从而增加了与一种给定蛋白质（或基因）相关的生物学作用的范围。在这项工作中，我们回顾了这一最新概念，并将其应用于毒理学领域，在该领域中，功能分子（及其作用）的多样性对于特定生物体的生存至关重要。
