Dark proteome
category of proteins
The dark proteome is defined as a group of proteins with no defined three-dimensional structure. It can not be detected or analyzed with the use of homologous modeling or analytical quantification because the molecular conformation is unknown. Dark proteins are mostly composed of unknown unknowns.
History
Dark proteins are estimated to be about 14% of the proteome in archaea and bacteria, while as much as 44–54% of the proteome in eukaryotes and viruses, is dark. Their origin is unclear. A large portion of the dark proteins are of viral origin. Dark protein regions are dark due to originating from unusual organisms without sufficient close relatives in protein databases to provide protein to protein data on sequence alignments and structure determination.
Function
Dark proteins are not applicable to the structure-function paradigm that proteins follow. They predominately consist of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDP) that are necessary for certain biological functions such as splicing, transcriptional, and post-translational signaling, and signaling via protein networks. These processes are commonly executed intracellularly.
The public source identifies “Dark proteome” as category of proteins. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dark, proteome and category.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dark proteome” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.