Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center RNA expert Arvind “Rasi” Subramaniam, PhD, has teamed up with investigators at the University of Pittsburgh to better understand microproteins, long overlooked short strings of amino acids. The group received a Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health to uncover the roles that microproteins play in biology.
“We know microproteins exist. The question has been, do they have any function?” Subramaniam said. He and his collaborators will seek to answer this question, as well as determine whether microproteins are subject to the same biological rules that shape the evolution of other proteins.
