Many prokaryotic RNAs are transcribed from loci outside of annotated protein coding genes. Across bacterial species hundreds of short open reading frames antisense to annotated genes show evidence of both transcription and translation, for instance in ribosome profiling data. Determining the functional fraction of these protein products awaits further research, including insights from studies of molecular interactions and detailed evolutionary analysis. There are multiple lines of evidence, however, that many of these newly discovered proteins are of use to the organism. Condition-specific phenotypes have been characterized for a few. These proteins should be added to genome annotations, and the methods for predicting them standardized. Evolutionary analysis of these typically young sequences also may provide important insights into gene evolution. This research should be prioritized for its exciting potential to uncover large numbers of novel proteins with extremely diverse potential practical uses, including applications in synthetic biology and responding to pathogens.

许多原核RNA从注释的蛋白质编码基因之外的基因座转录。在整个细菌物种中，数百个与注释基因反义的短开放阅读框显示出转录和翻译的证据，例如在核糖体分析数据中。确定这些蛋白质产物的功能部分尚待进一步研究，包括从分子相互作用研究和详细的进化分析中获得的见识。然而，有多种证据表明，这些新发现的蛋白质中有许多对生物体有用。条件特异性表型已经被表征了一些。这些蛋白质应添加到基因组注释中，并且对其进行预测的方法应标准化。这些典型的年轻序列的进化分析也可能为基因进化提供重要的见识。