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All living organisms are exposed to rapidly changing environmental conditions which may lead to external stress. How organisms cope with stress - especially on the molecular level - is explained in Stress Proteins. Cells react to external stress - where the temperature-induced reaction known as "heat shock response" is the best studied example of stress - by activating special genes and subsequently synthesizing stress proteins. Surprisingly, this stress response is not only similar for all types of stress but even the involved stress proteins are virtually identical in all organisms from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, from bacteria to humans. This universality shows that stress proteins are vital for surviving and indicates that these proteins play an essential role in normal cell functions, in cell growth and metabolism. This explains the great interest in stress response research.
One of the most intriguing discoveries in molecular biology in the last decade is the existence of an evolutionary conserved and essential system, consisting of molecular chaperones and folding catalysts, which promotes the folding of the proteins in the cell. This text summarizes our current knowledge of the cellular roles, the regulation and the mechanism of action of this system. It has a broad scope, covering cell biological, genetic and biochemical aspects of protein folding in cells from bacteria to man. Particularly appropriate to researchers working in basic and applied aspects of molecular medicine, this volume should also prove useful as an up-to-date reference book and as a textbook for specialized university courses.
Interest in the cell cycle has grown explosively in recent years as a result of the identification of key cell cycle regulators and their substrates. Aside from enhancing our understanding of normal cellular growth controls, this new knowledge has also becn valuable in elucidating mechanisms of growth deregulation which occur in diseased states, such as cancer and, in some instances, viral or parasitic infections. The Thirteenth Washington International Spring Symposium was organized with the intention of bringing together scientists working on different aspects of the cell cycle. Scientific topics presented ranged from molecular regulators and effectors to mitosis specific changes in cell a...
Mammalian cells have evolved a complex multicomponent machinery that enables them to sense and respond to a wide variety of potentially toxic agents present in their environment. These stress responses are often associated with an increased cellular capacity to tolerate normally lethal levels of an insult. The realization that the mammalian stress response may be intimately linked with many human diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, ischemia, fever, infection, and cancer, has led to an explosion of interest in this research area. Stress Response: Methods and Protocols brings together a diverse array of practical methodologies that may be employed to address various aspects of the respon...
The possible roles of heat shock proteins in normal develop- ment in animals, plants and model systems and the effects microorganisms and the effects of elevated temperature on developmental programs are comprehensively treated. All re- levant aspects of heat shock genes in normal and abnormal development are covered all of the major biological systems currently used to study the developmental biology of heat s- hock genes included. Heat is a medically significant terato- gen in humans and (other) animals. The heat shock response itself is developmentally regulated and is likely to be pro- tective in the developingembryo. In addition to roles in stress responses, heat shock genes are differentially ex- pressed during normal development in germ tissues and fur- ther in the specialized cell types of somatic tissues such as the mammalian brain. Heat shock genes are regulated du- ring the cell cycle and heat shock promoters are being used in ectopic expression systems to study the functions of particular genes during development.
This work is concerned with a group of proteins which were originally consid ered to be an esoteric phenomenon but which have now been shown to play critical roles both in normal and stressed cells as well as being involved in a variety of human diseases. It is the purpose of this work to give a comprehen sive view of these proteins and their various aspects. After an introductory chapter providing an overview of these proteins, the work is divided into four main sections each of which deals with one important aspect of these proteins. Thus, the first section contains a series of chapters which describe individual stress proteins and their roles in particular biological phenomena. Evidently, the induction of these proteins by elevated tempera ture or other stresses is their defining feature and the second section of this book therefore considers the regulation of stress protein gene expression both by stressful stimuli such as elevated temperature or ischaemia and by non stressful stimuli such as cytokines.
Cells have evolved multiple strategies to adapt the composition and quality of their protein equipment to needs imposed by changes in intra- and extracellular conditions. The appearance of pro teins transmit ting novel functional properties to cells can be controlled at a transcrip tional, posttranscriptional, translational or posttranslational level. Extensive research over the past 15 years has shown that transcriptional regulation is used as the predominant strategy to control the production of new proteins in response to extracellular stimuli. At the level of gene transcription, the initiation ofmRNA synthesis is used most frequently to govern gene expression. The key elements controllin...
This book presents a large amount of information related to the heat shock response and heat shock factor (HSF), describes core observations about molecular mechanisms and pathophysiological roles, and provides fundamental concepts on the basis of information from diverse aspects. This adaptive response to high temperature or protein misfolding is a fundamental mechanism to maintain the capacity of protein homeostasis, or proteostasis, and is evolutionally conserved among all living organisms, including bacteria and humans, on the earth. Furthermore, physiological and pathological roles of HSF have been extensively studied in fruit fly, worm, and mouse models. It has been revealed that HSF p...