Researchers characterize Ssb chaperone protein for the first time
Monday, December 5, 2016 - 06:31
in Biology & Nature
For 20 years, researchers have tried to find out why the chaperone Ssb is the only member of the widespread Hsp70-chaperone family that is able to bind directly to the ribosome. This question has now been answered at the University of Konstanz. The researchers identified two regions within the Ssb chaperone that mediate direct contact with the ribosome and thus support the function of Ssb. "We can demonstrate that Ssb interacts with the ribosome mainly via positively charged amino acids", says Professor Elke Deuerling, whose team discovered the binding sites of Ssb. The results were published on 5 December 2016 in Nature Communications.