CHARACTERIZATION OF NEW PROTEINS FOUND BY ANALYSIS OF SHORT OPEN READING FRAMES FROM THE FULL YEAST GENOME

We have analysed short open reading frames (between 150 and 300 base p airs long) of the yeast genome (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) with a two-s tep strategy. The first step selects a candidate set of open reading f rames from the DNA. sequence based on statistical evaluation of DNA an d protein sequence properties. The second step filters the candidate s et by selecting open reading frames with high similarity to other know n sequences (from any organism). As a result, we report ten new predic ted proteins not present in the current sequence databases. These incl ude a new alcohol dehydrogenase, a protein probably related to the cel l cycle, as well as a homolog of the prokaryotic ribosomal protein L36 likely to be a mitochondrial ribosomal protein coded in the nuclear g enome. We conclude that the analysis of short open reading frames lead s to biologically interesting discoveries, even though the quantitativ e yield of new proteins is relatively low. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.