Innovations in bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics, have led to the identification of a multitude of novel, small open reading frames (sORFs). The previous exclusion of these sORFs in genome-wide studies, based on the 300-nucleotide cap set on the original ORF-finding algorithms, has resulted in the neglect of a subset of proteins, known as micropeptides. These proteins play diverse and important biological functions. Several micropeptides have already been found to have critical functions in a variety of cellular processes, such as calcium regulation, muscle development, and fatty acid oxidation, suggesting that further study of unidentified micropeptides is an exciting new field of research. However, few of these novel genes have been characterized in the brain. In our lab, we focus on the study of age-dependent cognitive alterations using a mouse model of the human genetic disorder 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11DS). This genetic disorder is characterized by the deletion of up to 3 Mb on the q arm of the 22nd chromosome and occurs in approximately 1/4,000 live births. Patients who are diagnosed with this disorder usually develop age-related psychiatric symptoms with about 25% of individuals being diagnosed with schizophrenia later in life. This age-dependent onset of psychiatric symptoms makes 22q11DS an advantageous model to study the aging brain and dysfunction in molecular mechanisms that contribute to behavioral and cognitive deficits. 22q11DS can be modeled in mice, by deleting the syntenic region on the mouse chromosome 16. A screen of this region for novel plasticity associated genes revealed a novel sORF that encodes a previously uncharacterized micropeptide that was named Plasticity Associated Neural Transcript Short (Pants). We have found that this micropeptide is expressed in the hippocampus in an age-dependent manner and that deletion of this sORF results in age-dependent synaptic plasticity alterations between early adult (6-8 weeks) and mature adult (16-20 weeks) mice. The investigation into this novel micropeptide can lend insights into the role of small proteins in the brain and how critical they are to normal biological function as well as age-related neural disease.