Perdigão Nelson, Rosa Agostinho
Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal.
Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal.
High Throughput. 2019 Mar 27;8(2):8. doi: 10.3390/ht8020008.
The dark proteome, as we define it, is the part of the proteome where 3D structure has not been observed either by homology modeling or by experimental characterization in the protein universe. From the 550.116 proteins available in Swiss-Prot (as of July 2016), 43.2% of the eukarya universe and 49.2% of the virus universe are part of the dark proteome. In bacteria and archaea, the percentage of the dark proteome presence is significantly less, at 12.6% and 13.3% respectively. In this work, we present a necessary step to complete the dark proteome picture by introducing the map of the dark proteome in the human and in other model organisms of special importance to mankind. The most significant result is that around 40% to 50% of the proteome of these organisms are still in the dark, where the higher percentages belong to higher eukaryotes (mouse and human organisms). Due to the amount of darkness present in the human organism being more than 50%, deeper studies were made, including the identification of 'dark' genes that are responsible for the production of so-called dark proteins, as well as the identification of the 'dark' tissues where dark proteins are over represented, namely, the heart, cervical mucosa, and natural killer cells. This is a step forward in the direction of gaining a deeper knowledge of the human dark proteome.
按照我们的定义，暗蛋白质组是蛋白质组中通过同源建模或蛋白质领域的实验表征均未观察到三维结构的部分。在Swiss-Prot（截至2016年7月）中可用的550,116种蛋白质中，真核生物领域的43.2%和病毒领域的49.2%属于暗蛋白质组。在细菌和古细菌中，暗蛋白质组的存在百分比明显较低，分别为12.6%和13.3%。在这项工作中，我们通过引入人类以及对人类特别重要的其他模式生物中的暗蛋白质组图谱，迈出了完善暗蛋白质组图景的必要一步。最显著的结果是，这些生物的蛋白质组中约40%至50%仍处于未知状态，其中较高的百分比属于高等真核生物（小鼠和人类机体）。由于人类机体中未知部分超过50%，因此进行了更深入的研究，包括鉴定负责产生所谓暗蛋白的“暗”基因，以及鉴定暗蛋白过度表达的“暗”组织，即心脏、宫颈黏膜和自然杀伤细胞。这是朝着更深入了解人类暗蛋白质组方向迈出的一步。
