Heat shock proteins

• Cecilia Emanuelsson

Within this project we are investigating a special type of molecular chaperone proteins, so called small heat shock protein (sHsps) chaperones, which are multimeric proteins promoting survival of cell by interaction with other proteins to prevent their aggregation. sHsps exist in practically all species, with 10 different homologues in the human genome and 25 different homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana. We have characterized the recombinantly expressed proteins by various biochemical and spectroscopical methods and found that overexpression of Hsp21, a chloroplast localized sHsp, increases plant stress resistance.

Currently, we investigate protein-protein interactions to elucidate the mechanism of how sHsps interact with and protect cellular client proteins utilizing chemical crosslinking, mass spectrometric mapping of crosslinked dipeptides, single particle EM and NMR.

Ulrika Härndahl, PhD thesis, Lund University, 2000

Niklas Gustavsson, PhD thesis, Lund University, 2001

Emma Åhrman, PhD thesis, Lund University, 2007