Buried treasure: bioactive plant seed proteins evolving inside hosts

这个项目旨在研究植物的进化如何通过将一个蛋白质埋在另一个蛋白质中来缩短新蛋白质的产生。科学家们现在意识到，新的基因和蛋白质经常出现。最近在植物种子中的一项发现涉及在一个基因中插入DNA序列，该基因制造两种蛋白质而不是一种蛋白质。该项目将揭示一个新的埋藏种子蛋白质家族，确定埋藏它们的规则，并在植物中寻找新的例子。来自植物的第一个例子创造了具有很强生物活性的产品，因此挖掘类似植物事件的能力将揭示具有生物医学和生物技术应用的新的生物活性天然产品。

This project aims to examine how evolution in plants shortcuts the creation of new proteins by burying one within another. Scientists now realise that new genes and proteins appear frequently. A recent discovery in plant seeds involves DNA sequence insertions in a gene that makes two proteins instead of one. This project will reveal a new family of buried seed proteins, determine the rules for burying them and search plants for new examples. The first examples from plants create strongly bioactive products so the ability to dig for similar plant events will reveal new and bioactive natural products with biomedical and biotechnology applications.