The Plant uORF-pep Database is the first comprehensive resource dedicated to upstream open reading frames (uORFs) and their encoded peptides in plants. uORFs are small coding sequences in 5' untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs. While classically known as cis-regulatory elements modulating downstream translation, recent discoveries have revealed that many uORFs encode functional peptides (uPEPs) with diverse biological roles. In plants, an uORF-encoded mobile peptide (uPEP1) was recently shown to trigger systemic stomatal immunity as a long-distance signaling molecule (Liu et al., 2026, Cell). These findings underscore the biological significance of uORFs beyond canonical translational regulation.
Our database provides systematic identification of uORFs across 30 plant species, spanning major crops (rice, wheat, maize, soybean), vegetables and fruits (tomato, cucumber, banana), and model plants (Arabidopsis, Brachypodium, Medicago). Each uORF includes nucleotide and predicted peptide sequences. Unique to this database, we integrate four layers of evidence to prioritize functional uORFs:
🔬 Ribo-seq validation — translation evidence from 6 species covering 60% of uORF-hosting genes.
🌍 Cross-species conservation — 85K conserved uORF genes identified across 10 representative plants.
🧠 ML-based prediction — translation probability for 5M uORFs via Random Forest (79% accuracy).
⭐ Novel candidate discovery — 6.6K conserved but unannotated uORF peptides as high-value candidates for experimental validation.