Proinsulin misfolding in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) initiates a cell death response, although the mechanism(s) remains unknown. To provide insight into how protein misfolding may cause β-cell failure, we analyzed mice with the deletion of P58(IPK)/DnajC3, an ER luminal co-chaperone. P58(IPK-/-) mice become diabetic as a result of decreased β-cell function and mass accompanied by induction o...

Background: The chaperone activity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Acr is an important function that helps to prevent misfolding of protein substrates inside the host, especially in conditions of hypoxia. Objectives: The aim of this study was to establish the correlation of structure and function of recombinant Acr proteins both before and after ge...

Background Aggregation of therapeutic antibodies could be generated at different steps of the manufacturing process, posing the problem for quality control of produced antibodies. It has been well known that secreted antibodies from recombinant mammalian cells into culture medium can aggregate due to the physicochemical stresses such as media pH and osmolality, cultivation temperature [1,2]. Th...

The disaccharide trehalose is a major determinant of desiccation tolerance via unresolved mechanisms. A new study highlights a critical role for this chemical chaperone in energy-independent maintenance of protein homeostasis during extended periods of dehydration and relative metabolic inactivity.

Exposure of C. elegans to hypertonic stress-induced water loss causes rapid and widespread cellular protein damage. Survival in hypertonic environments depends critically on the ability of worm cells to detect and degrade misfolded and aggregated proteins. Acclimation of C. elegans to mild hypertonic stress suppresses protein damage and increases survival under more extreme hypertonic condition...

Antimalarial drugs with novel modes of action and wide therapeutic potential are needed to pave the way for malaria eradication. Violacein is a natural compound known its biological activity against cancer cells several pathogens, including parasite, Plasmodium falciparum (Pf). Herein, using chemical genomic profiling (CGP), we found that violacein affects protein homeostasis. Mechanistically, ...

The lipase from Pseudomonas cepacia ATCC 21808 (recently reclassified as Burkholderia cepacia) is widely used by organic chemists for enantioselective synthesis and is manufactured from recombinant P. cepacia harboring on a plasmid the clustered genes for lipase and its chaperone. High levels of expression of inactive lipase (40%) in Escherichia coli were achieved with pCYTEXP1 under the contro...