Amino acid homorepeats, or homorepeats, are polypeptide segments found in proteins that contain stretches of identical amino acid residues. Although abnormal homorepeat expansions are linked to pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases, homorepeats are prevalent in eukaryotic proteomes, suggesting that they are important for normal physiology. In this Review, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the biological functions of homorepeats, which range from facilitating subcellular protein localization to mediating interactions between proteins across diverse cellular pathways. We explore how the functional diversity of homorepeat-containing proteins could be linked to the ability of homorepeats to adopt different structural conformations, an ability influenced by repeat composition, repeat length and the nature of flanking sequences. We conclude by highlighting how an understanding of homorepeats will help us better characterize and develop therapeutics against the human diseases to which they contribute.

氨基酸同源重复序列或同源重复序列是在蛋白质中发现的多肽片段，其中包含一段相同的氨基酸残基。尽管异常的同源重复扩增与神经退行性疾病等病理学有关，但同源重复在真核蛋白质组中普遍存在，表明它们对正常生理学很重要。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了我们对同源重复序列生物学功能理解的最新进展，其范围从促进亚细胞蛋白质定位到介导不同细胞通路中蛋白质之间的相互作用。我们探讨了包含同源重复序列的蛋白质的功能多样性如何与同源重复序列采用不同结构构象的能力相关联，这种能力受重复组成、重复长度和侧翼序列性质的影响。