Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, but they are easily rendered useless.
Heat, chemicals and even agitation can cause them to unravel, exposing their sticky interiors so that they glob together in a useless tangle. Now John Glover and Susan Lindquist, molecular geneticists at the University of Chicago, have found that a combination of three different HSPs not only prevents protein tangles forming but even untangles them after they have formed. The HSPs can restore the proteins to their native, functional state within just a few minutes. Glover and Lindquist unravelled samples of luciferase, the protein in fireflies that makes their tails glow. They then added HSPs from yeast in various combinations.