Fig. 3

Conservation of high-confidence smORFs at the protein-coding level. A Violin and box plots showing the distribution of N/S ratios of the correct (blue) and “incorrect” (grey) reading frames of RefSeq genes (n = 1200) and high-confidence smORFs (n = 2,891), with a lower N/S ratio observed in the correct reading. B Violin plot and boxplot showing that the correct reading frame (blue) had lower MOEUF scores compared to all five “incorrect” reading frames (grey) for both RefSeq genes (n = 1200) and high-confidence smORFs (n = 2,891). Box plots displaying the first quartile, median and third quartile. All P values are based on the paired Wilcoxon signed rank test