Hybrid Gene Origination Creates Human-Virus Chimeric Proteins during Infection.

This work was carried out by colleagues at the CVR and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. We report the existence of this mechanism of gene origination, which we named “start-snatching.” Depending on the reading frame, start-snatching allows the translation of host and viral “untranslated regions” (UTRs) to create N-terminally extended viral proteins or entirely novel polypeptides by genetic overprinting.