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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Mar 15.
Published in final edited form as: Exp Cell Res. 2020 Jan 21;388(2):111853. doi: 10.1016/j.yexcr.2020.111853

Figure 1. Membrane microproteins exert their biological effects through protein-protein interactions.

Figure 1.

A large proportion of putative microproteins are predicted to contain hydrophobic domains that target them to cellular membranes. Within these membranes, microproteins function as singular protein domains that engage much larger regulatory proteins or multiprotein complexes to exert powerful biological functions. Shown here is a ribbon model of the structure of the microprotein phospholamban (blue) bound to the calcium pump SERCA (orange) (PDB ID 4KYT) [45]. This image highlights how microproteins can fit into small binding clefts in large regulatory proteins to fine-tune very complex biological systems. This figure was generated using Mol* at RCSB PDB [46, 47].