Thinking outside the box: new insights into the mechanism of GroEL-mediated protein folding
Jue D. Wang
& Jonathan S. Weissman
Jue D. Wang and Jonathan S. Weissman are in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, University of California- San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Ave., San Francisco, California 94143-0450, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Jonathan S. Weissman jsw1@itsa.ucsf.edu
GroEL is thought to assist protein folding in part by providing a passive 'box' in which folding can occur without danger of aggregation. Two new papers now suggest that GroEL can also play a more active role by promoting rearrangement and even unfolding of kinetic folding intermediates.
