Hsp31, a member of the DJ-1 superfamily, is a multitasking stress responder with chaperone activity.

Among different types of protein aggregation, amyloids are a biochemically well characterized state of protein aggregation that are associated with a large number of neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an insightful model to understand the underlying mechanism of protein aggregation. Many yeast molecular chaperones can modulate aggregation and misfolding of proteins including α-Syn and the Sup35 prion. Hsp31 is a homodimeric protein structurally similar to human DJ-1, a Parkinson's disease-linked protein, and both are members of the DJ-1/ThiJ/PfpI superfamily. An emerging view is that Hsp31 and its associated superfamily members each have divergent multitasking functions that have the common theme of responding and managing various types of cellular stress. Hsp31 has several biochemical activities including chaperone and detoxifying enzyme activities that modulate at various points of a stress pathway such as toxicity associated with protein misfolding. However, we have shown the protective role of Hsp31's chaperone activity can operate independent of detoxifying enzyme activities in preventing the early stages of protein aggregate formation and associated cellular toxicities. We provide additional data that collectively supports the multiple functional roles that can be accomplished independent of each other. We present data indicating Hsp31 purified from yeast is more active compared to expression and purification from E. coli suggesting that posttranslational modifications could be important for Hsp31 to be fully active. We also compare the similarities and differences in activities among paralogs of Hsp31 supporting a model in which this protein family has overlapping but diverging roles in responding to various sources of cellular stresses.

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