Fig. 1.

General topology of the small open reading frame (SMORF) family. The similarly score plot of SMORF proteins generated using the AlignX module of Vector NTI is presented. (A more detailed presentation of the analysis used to generate this figure is available in the Supplementary Fig. S1.) The signal peptide is designated in green and hypervariable regions (HVR) in red. SMORF A and B polypeptides differ by the presence of a large hypervariable insertion, with a similarity plot of the insertion shown above the main sequence. Degenerate repeat sequence regions are shown in light blue, with repeat 1 present in all SMORF polypeptides and repeat 2 present only in the SMORF A insertion. The location of the 12-mer peptide KYSVEWYLLPKP used for immunisation is identified with a black arrowhead and the C-terminal 9 amino acid portion of the peptide present in the repeat regions is underlined.