Structural model of dodecameric heat-shock protein Hsp21 : Flexible N-terminal arms interact with client proteins while C-terminal tails maintain the dodecamer and chaperone activity
Small heat-shock proteins (sHsps) prevent aggregation of thermosensitive client proteins in a first line of defense against cellular stress. The mechanisms by which they perform this function have been hard to define due to limited structural information; currently, there is only one high-resolution structure of a plant sHsp published, that of the cytosolic Hsp16.9. We took interest in Hsp21, a ch