A Whole New (Microbial) World

The microbiome is a diverse collection of bacteria closely intertwined with all aspects of human health. Over recent years, efforts to shift microbiome research from descriptive to mechanistic have revealed remarkable genetic diversity. However, the challenge of linking gene to phenotype is a complex one, especially because current annotation techniques disregard an entire class of genes. Known as small open reading frames (sORFs), these genes encode potentially significant proteins – and that’s why Ami Bhatt and her team at Stanford University wanted to uncover their diverse functions (1).