Le 23 juin 2026, nous accueillerons pour un séminaire externe Jennifer Zanet, de l'Unité de biologie Moléculaire, Cellulaire et du Développement, Centre de Biologie Intégrative CBI, CNRS - Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse. 

Pour plus d'information : https://cbi-toulouse.fr/membre/zanet-jennifer/

Titre: Microproteins encoded by a bicistronic RNA control Drosophila reproduction and tyrosine metabolism

Abstract:

Microproteins (also known as smORF/sORF peptides; micropeptides; AltORFs or SEPs) are defined as small proteins inferior to 100 amino acids encoded by small Open Reading Frames (smORF), which were initially discarded from genome annotation due to their small size. However, it is now well established that genomes contain smORFs encoding for thousands of microproteins. Since the microproteome remains largely overlooked, microproteins are now emerging as a rich pool of novel biological regulators. Our team investigates the biological functions of novel regulatory microproteins and elucidates their molecular functions in vivo using Drosophila as a model organism. In our previous functional genetic screen, we identified a gene with the particularity of being bicistronic and encoding two distinct microproteins. The functional analysis shows that the two microproteins play distinct molecular roles in Drosophila and that their cooperation controls male fertility through the regulation of the TOR pathway and tyrosine metabolism. We propose the microproteome as a valuable source of metabolic and reproductive regulators.