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The world’s largest proteins? These mega-molecules turn bacteria into predators

A candidate for the largest known protein might help killer aquatic bacteria to devour other microbes — but it’s not easy to study the behemoths, or prove they’re even real.
  1. Ewen Callaway
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Jacob West-Roberts, a computational biologist at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, was scouring microbial DNA sequences for giant genes and discovered what he thought was a whopper: a gene encoding a protein made up of 1,800 amino acids. The average protein has a few hundred.

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Nature 625, 16-18 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03937-z

References

  1. West-Roberts, J. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.21.568195 (2023).

  2. Reva, O. & Tümmler, B. Environ. Microbiol. 10, 768–777 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Kizina, J. et al. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 88, e02407-21 (2022).

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