Alan Saghatelian, PhD, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Webinar

Moderator: Alan Saghatelian, Ph.D, Professor of Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies 

Webinar title: Functional translation of small open reading frames and their encoded microproteins in human microglia

Abstract: The focus of our webinar is on the emerging field of microproteins, which are short proteins containing fewer than 150 amino acids. These microproteins have been overlooked for years because of a 300-base-pair cutoff during the Human Genome Project era. However, recent advancements in computational, molecular, and proteomic tools have rectified this omission, revealing significant implications for drug discovery, particularly in challenging diseases such as neurodegeneration. During our webinar, we will showcase our recent research that demonstrates the active translation of approximately 10,000 small open reading frames (smORFs) in human microglial cells that have the capacity to code for microproteins. Following the identification of these smORFs, we conducted an extensive smORF-ome CRISPR screen to uncover several that are crucial for microglial survival and phagocytosis.

Presenter: Brendan Miller, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in Dr. Alan Saghatelian’s lab