Functional Significance of Minor Structural and Expression Changes in Stress Chaperone Mortalin

摘要

Mortalin is one of the highly conserved heat-shock chap-erones. Some of the established features of mortalin include its varioussubcellular localizations, multiple binding partners, and differential sub-cellular distribution in normal and immortal cells. It inhibits nucleartranslocation, transcriptional activation, and control of centrosome-duplication functions of p53. It also functions as an adaptive proteinin a variety of stress–response mechanisms and contributes to humancarcinogenesis. Interestingly, minor alterations in its structure and levelof expression may lead to drastic biological consequences (for example,Myelodysplastic syndrome and old age pathologies, such as Alzheimer'sand Parkinson's disease). Besides being validated as a reliable target forcancer therapy, mortalin also warrants attention from the perspectivesof management of old-age diseases and healthy aging.