Macromolecular crowding: an important but neglected aspect of the intracellular environment

Biological macromolecules have evolved over billions of years to function inside cells, so it is not surprising that researchers studying the properties of such molecules, either in extracts or in purified form, take care to control factors that reflect the intracellular environment, such as pH, ion...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current Opinion in Structural Biology 2001-02, Vol.11 (1), p.114-119
Main Author: Ellis, R.John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chaperonins
Crowding
Cytoplasm - ultrastructure
Diffusion
Eukaryotic Cells - ultrastructure
excluded volume
macromolecular interactions
Models, Chemical
Models, Structural
Models, Theoretical
molecular chaperones
Prokaryotic Cells - ultrastructure
protein assembly
Protein Binding
Protein Folding
Thermodynamics
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Summary:Biological macromolecules have evolved over billions of years to function inside cells, so it is not surprising that researchers studying the properties of such molecules, either in extracts or in purified form, take care to control factors that reflect the intracellular environment, such as pH, ionic strength and composition, redox potential and the concentrations of relevant metabolites and effector molecules. There is one universal aspect of the cellular interior, however, that is largely neglected — the fact that it is highly crowded with macromolecules. It is proposed that the addition of crowding agents should become as routine as controlling pH and ionic strength if we are to meet the objective of studying biological molecules under more physiologically relevant conditions.
ISSN:0959-440X
1879-033X
DOI:10.1016/S0959-440X(00)00172-X