In article <1tbqrk$f4r at zippy.Telcom.Arizona.EDU> droberts at joplin.biosci.arizona.edu (Doug Roberts) writes:
>It seems to me that at room
>temperature, most proteins will be stable against denaturation. (Most of the
>melting curves I've seen are quite flat around this temp.) The other point
>is that we grow up our yeast at 36C and their proteins seem to work just
>fine.
Things are very different in vivo. Even if your buffer manages to
duplicate the precise ionic conditions in the cell, the protective effects
of all that glutathione, and the high total protein concentration, there
are still the "molecular chaperones" to consider--the hsp70s and all their
little friends. They're always there, presumably looking out for
partially denatured proteins, and binding them and helping them back to
their minimal energy conformation when they find them.
steve gisselbrecht
cell & dev. bio.
harvard medical school
