Decades ago, scientists developed a blood pressure drug from a small protein found in a pit viper. Embedded within the stretches of our genome are thousands of tiny genes with instructions to make other small proteins that have no obvious function. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a team of Pitt Med researchers a five-year, $7.6 million Director’s Transformative Research Award to find out how these microproteins interact with the immune system. If the proteins are seen as invaders, they could be related to autoimmune diseases, disorders in which the body attacks itself.

The award is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which supports transformative project proposals that are untested but have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms.

“Are microproteins good for health because they help fight pathogens or bad for health because they trigger the immune system, or both?” asks Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis, a PhD associate professor of computational and systems biology and one of the principal investigators. “We are looking forward to finding out. This will be fun!”

Carvunis will work with Pitt co-PIs Alok Joglekar, a PhD assistant professor of immunology with a joint appointment in computational and systems biology, and Maninjay Atianand, a PhD assistant professor of immunology. Rasi Subramaniam, a PhD at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, is a fourth investigator.

Read more from the Winter 2024 issue.