Chaperone (protein) - Location and Functions

Location and Functions

Many chaperones are heat shock proteins, that is, proteins expressed in response to elevated temperatures or other cellular stresses. The reason for this behaviour is that protein folding is severely affected by heat and, therefore, some chaperones act to repair the potential damage caused by misfolding. Other chaperones are involved in folding newly made proteins as they are extruded from the ribosome. Although most newly synthesized proteins can fold in absence of chaperones, a minority strictly requires them for the same.

Macromolecular crowding may be important in chaperone function. The crowded environment of the cytosol can accelerate the folding process, since a compact folded protein will occupy less volume than an unfolded protein chain. However, crowding can reduce the yield of correctly-folded protein by increasing protein aggregation. Crowding may also increase the effectiveness of the chaperone proteins such as GroEL, which could counteract this reduction in folding efficiency.

More information on the various types and mechanisms of a subset of chaperones that encapsulate their folding substrates can be found in the article for chaperonins. Chaperonins are characterized by a stacked double-ring structure and are found in prokaryotes, in the cytosol of eukaryotes, and in mitochondria.

Other types of chaperones are involved in transport across membranes, for example membranes of the mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in eukaryotes. Bacterial translocation—specific chaperone maintains newly synthesized precursor polypeptide chains in a translocation-competent (generally unfolded) state and guides them to the translocon.

New functions for chaperones continue to be discovered, such as assistance in protein degradation, bacterial adhesin activity, and in responding to diseases linked to protein aggregation (e.g. see prion).