Lab-evolved 'super Spy' chaperones show enhanced flexibility, which allows them to bind to and stabilize proteins more effectively than natural chaperones.
Hsp70 chaperone provides Hsp104 with high efficiency in disaggregation and specificity towards aggregated substrates at the, otherwise limiting, cellular concentrations of adenine nucleotides.
ATP consumption enables chaperones to exploit the different kinetic properties of their conformational states to exhibit a non-equilibrium affinity for their substrates that is orders of magnitude higher than its equilibrium value.
Cells accumulate damaged proteins during aging and, by compromising the function of chaperones in folding newly synthesized G1 cyclins, proteostasis breakdown inhibits cell-cycle entry and drives yeast cells into senescence.
SatS of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a new protein export chaperone with a role in exporting proteins by the specialized SecA2 pathway and a role in intracellular growth in macrophages.
A combined NMR and kinetic study demonstrates how the dynamic transition of a molecular chaperone between different oligomerization states can modulate its activity by altering the binding kinetics and energetics of non-native proteins.
Modeling and biophysics show that the unstructured acidic tail of the Sm protein Hfq mimics nucleic acid to auto inhibit its chaperone activity, preventing Hfq from being sequestered by inauthentic substrates and providing insight into the evolution of Hfq's chaperone function among bacterial genera.