Establishment of methods for prediction of the function of functionally-unknown gene products by the analysis of the posttranslational protein modifications.

随着人类基因组计划的完成，现在已经有了大量的基因序列。然而，这些基因中的许多功能还没有确定。因此，鉴定这些基因的功能是蛋白质组学研究的重要目的之一。目前，众所周知，许多翻译后修饰，如蛋白质降解加工、磷酸化、糖基化、脂质修饰、ADP核糖化等，在蛋白质的结构和功能中起着关键作用，并调节许多细胞事件，如细胞内信号转导。然而，目前还没有建立系统的方法来分析蛋白质的翻译后修饰。在本研究中，我们已经证明，在体外翻译系统或在转基因细胞中，利用代谢标记可以成功地检测到不同蛋白质的靶向、加工和修饰。由于许多这些翻译后修饰在蛋白质的结构和功能中扮演着特定的角色，因此从这些实验观察中预测蛋白质的功能是可能的。

Upon the completion of the Human Genome Project, huge numbers of genetic sequences are now available. However, the function of many of these genes has not been identified. Therefore, the identification of the function of these genes is one of the most important purposes of the study of Proteomics.Now, it is well known that many of the posttranslational modifications such as proteolytic processing, phosphorylation, glycosylation, lipid modifications, ADP-ribosylation etc. play critical roles in the structure and function of protein and regulate many cellular events such as intracellular signal transduction. However, systematic method to analyze the posttranslational modification of protein has not been established.In the present study, we have shown that targeting, processing and modification of a distinct protein could be successfully detected by using metabolic labeling in an in vitro translation system or in transfected cells. Since many of these posttranslational modifications play specific roles in the structure and function of protein, it might be possible to predict the function of the protein from these experimental observations.