Since the annotation of protein-coding genes is an ongoing process, the goal of these pages is to provide regular updates for the status of such putative human specific proteins.
To do so, homologs are looked for in well-annotated proteomes of primates, as found in Uniprot. The current degree of knowledge about proteins with no such homolog is then assessed using the type of evidence for their existence (PE), PE=1 meaning they are known at protein level, 2, at transcript level, 3, by homology (ideally: none), 4, through prediction, 5 meaning that they are uncertain.
They are also looked for in putative open reading frames of non-coding RNAs, as found in RNAcentral, with the idea that human proteins with an homolog in an open reading frame of a non-coding RNA of another species may have escaped annotation so far.
Moreover, in order to back the hypothesis that they are actual proteins, their foldability is assessed through the prediction of their degree of globularity, according to IUPred. Note however that functional proteins can be disordered. Homologs are also looked for in the PDB.
