Global methods for assaying translation have greatly improved our understanding of the protein-coding capacity of the genome. In particular, it is now possible to perform genome-wide and condition-specific identification of translation initiation sites through modified ribosome profiling methods that selectively capture initiating ribosomes. Here we discuss our recent study applying such an approach to meiotic and mitotic timepoints in the simple eukaryote, budding yeast, as an example of the surprising diversity of protein products—many of which are non-canonical—that can be revealed by such methods. We also highlight several key challenges in studying non-canonical protein isoforms that have precluded their prior systematic discovery. A growing body of work supports expanded use of empirical protein-coding region identification, which can help relieve some of the limitations and biases inherent to traditional genome annotation approaches. Our study also argues for the adoption of less static views of gene identity and a broader framework for considering the translational capacity of the genome.

用于分析翻译的全球方法大大改善了我们对基因组蛋白质编码能力的理解。特别是，现在有可能通过选择性捕获起始核糖体的修饰核糖体谱分析方法对翻译起始位点进行全基因组和条件特异性的翻译。在这里，我们讨论我们最近的研究，该研究将这种方法应用于简单的真核生物，发芽酵母中的减数分裂和有丝分裂时间点，以此作为蛋白质产品令人惊讶的多样性的一个例子（其中许多是非经典的），可以通过这种方法来揭示。我们还强调了研究非经典蛋白质同工型的一些关键挑战，这些挑战阻碍了它们先前的系统发现。越来越多的工作支持对经验性蛋白质编码区识别的广泛使用，这可以缓解传统基因组注释方法固有的局限性和偏见。我们的研究还主张采用较少静态的基因同一性观点，并采用更广泛的框架来考虑基因组的翻译能力。