What happens with the stressed stress proteins
Environmental stress leads to proteotoxic damage, when many of our proteins
loose their native structure, neces sary to any enzyme action. Stress
proteins help the recovery of the native conformation of the other proteins.
However, stress proteins are proteins themselves, and they also suffer
a significant damage. Unfortunately stress protein function is not easily
measured, therefore stress protein damage was not investigated before.
I have used a novel tool developed in our lab, affinity nucleotide cleavage,
to monitor stress protein denaturation. Moreover, I was able to address
the question for the first time: what happens, if the damage control
itself gets damaged? My studies revealed that the repair of stress proteins
needs a rather complex, active mechanism of our cells. My results may
open novel ways to preserve stress protein function, which would be a
new strategy to cure aging diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease,
Alzheimer’s disease, etc.
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