Virus genome: protein inside another protein The genome sequence for the GenBank virus JX869059.2 (a human betacoronavirus) contains, among others, two proteins:

N protein (range 28566..29807) and
Orf8b (range 28762..29100).

The interval for Orf8b is contained in the interval for N.
How are these proteins translated? Is the orf8 protein created with post-translational processing after N is translated, or does the ribosome translate the two proteins separately?
Note that the protein sequence of ORF8b is not contained within the protein sequence of protein N. That means that they are translated from different frames (though they are in the same orientation). Indeed, if we just subtract the start coordinates we do not find a multiple of 3.
Thus, they cannot be results of the same translational event. This means that the smaller protein could result from translational slippage (as suggested by Matteo Ferla), &quot;leaky scanning&quot; of the translation machines for start codons, or it could simply result from a different ribosome assembly site, recruited via the viral mechanism of an internal ribosome entry site, which allows a ribosome to be recruited in a mRNA cap-independent fashion (though this may be less likely).
For some mechanistic details of how one such ORF is translated, see this paper.
It looks like such things are sometimes called &quot;subgenomic mRNAs&quot;. For a paper on such nested genes in coronavirus, including I believe Orf8b, see here.