The ever-growing repertoire of genomic techniques continues to expand our understanding of the true diversity and richness of prokaryotic genomes. Riboproteogenomics laid the foundation for dynamic studies of previously overlooked genomic elements. Most strikingly, bacterial genomes were revealed to harbor robust repertoires of small open reading frames (sORFs) encoding a diverse and broadly expressed range of small proteins, or sORF-encoded polypeptides (SEPs). In recent years, continuous efforts led to great improvements in the annotation and characterization of such proteins, yet many challenges remain to fully comprehend the pervasive nature of small proteins and their impact on bacterial biology. In this work, we review the recent developments in the dynamic field of bacterial genome reannotation, catalog the important biological roles carried out by small proteins and identify challenges obstructing the way to full understanding of these elusive proteins.

中文翻译：

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暴露细菌生命的少量蛋白质负载

不断增长的基因组技术不断扩大我们对原核基因组真正多样性和丰富性的理解。核糖蛋白质基因组学为以前被忽视的基因组元件的动态研究奠定了基础。最引人注目的是，细菌基因组被发现拥有强大的小开放阅读框（sORF）库，编码多种且广泛表达的小蛋白质，或sORF编码的多肽（SEP）。近年来，不断的努力使得此类蛋白质的注释和表征取得了巨大进步，但要充分理解小蛋白质的普遍性质及其对细菌生物学的影响仍然存在许多挑战。在这项工作中，我们回顾了细菌基因组重新注释动态领域的最新进展，对小蛋白质所发挥的重要生物学作用进行了分类，并确定了阻碍充分理解这些难以捉摸的蛋白质的挑战。