Research Team Lays Foundations for Investigation of Molecular Chaperones

Heidelberg molecular biologists have achieved new insights into the synthesis of proteins with a newly developed technique.

A team of scientists headed by Professor Dr Bernd Bukau and Dr Günter Kramer of the DKFZ-ZMBH Alliance in conjunction with Professor Dr. Jonathan Weissman from the University of California in San Francisco devised this new method, which is called “selective ribosome profiling.”The Alliance is a research association between the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH) and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). Selective ribosome profiling enables researchers to identify a cell’s protein synthesis profile. It was developed for a specific factor that assists in protein synthesis (molecular chaperone) to analyse the participation of chaperones in the folding of newly synthesised proteins.

“These new insights provide the basis for a molecular understanding of how the factors involved in the maturation and

folding of newly synthesised proteins are coordinated so that they do not get in each other’s way,” said Professor Bukau. The findings have been published in the journal ‘Cell’.