'Selective promiscuity,' chaperones, and the secrets of cellular health

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced a major new advance in understanding how our genetic information eventually translates into functional proteins—one of the building blocks of human life. The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), elucidates how chaperones display "selective promiscuity" for the specific proteins—their "clients"—they serve. This property enables them to play an essential role in maintaining healthy cells and is a step forward in understanding the origins of a host of human illnesses, from cancer to ALS.