Poorly conserved ORFs in the genome of the archaea Halobacterium sp NRC-1 correspond to expressed proteins

摘要

Motivation: A large fraction of open reading frames (ORFs) identified as 'hypothetical' proteins correspond to either 'conserved hypothetical' proteins, representing sequences homologous to ORFs of unknown function from other organisms, or to hypothetical proteins lacking any significant sequence similarity to other ORFs in the databases. Elucidating the functions and three-dimensional structures of such orphan ORFs, termed ORFans or poorly conserved ORFs (PCOs), is essential for understanding biodiversity. However, it has been claimed that many ORFans may not encode for expressed proteins.