AUTHOR=Assenza Salvatore , De Los Rios Paolo , Barducci Alessandro 

TITLE=Quantifying the role of chaperones in protein translocation by computational modeling

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences

VOLUME=Volume 2 - 2015

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-biosciences/articles/10.3389/fmolb.2015.00008

DOI=10.3389/fmolb.2015.00008

ISSN=2296-889X

ABSTRACT=The molecular chaperone Hsp70 plays a central role in the import of cytoplasmic proteins into organelles,
driving their translocation by binding them from the organellar interior. Starting from 
the experimentally-determined structure of the E. coli Hsp70, we computed, by means of molecular simulations,
the effective free-energy profile for substrate translocation upon
chaperone binding. We then used the resulting free energy to quantitatively characterize the kinetics of the import 
process, whose comparison with unassisted translocation highlights 
the essential role played by Hsp70 in importing cytoplasmic proteins.