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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

A Rapid High-throughput Method for Mapping Ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) on Human pre-mRNA
Published on: December 2, 2009
Small open reading frames in 5' untranslated regions of mRnas
Riu Yamashita1, Yutaka Suzuki, Kenta Nakai
1Laboratory of Genome Database, Human Genome Center, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1, Shirokane-dai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan.
Abstract:
Using the 5'-end sequence data from 'oligo-capped' cDNAs, we generated a representative full-length cDNA dataset for 4870 RefSeq entries, and analyzed the 5' untranslated region (UTR) of these genes. To our surprise, about half of the 4870 genes had an upstream ATG before the ATG that starts the longest open reading frame (ORF), suggesting that about half of them have small ORFs in their 5' UTR of average length of 31 amino acids. They require attention for further analysis to identify their biological role.
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