title: Caught with their PAMPs down? The extracellular signalling actions of molecular chaperones are not due to microbial contaminants.
abstract: In recent years, it has been hypothesised that a new signalling system may exist in vertebrates in which secreted molecular chaperones form a dynamic continuum between the cellular stress response and corresponding homeostatic physiological mechanisms. This hypothesis seems to be supported by the finding that many molecular chaperones are released from cells and act as extracellular signals for a range of cells. However, this nascent field of biological research seems to suffer from an excessive criticism that the biological activities of molecular chaperones are due to undefined components of the microbial expression hosts used to generate recombinant versions of these proteins. In this article, a number of the proponents of the cell signalling actions of molecular chaperones take this criticism head-on. They show that sufficient evidence exists to support fully the hypothesis that molecular chaperones have cell-cell signalling actions that are likely to be part of the homeostatic mechanism of the vertebrate.
authors.affiliation: UCL-Eastman Dental Institute, University College London, UK. b.henderson@eastman.ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Henderson
authors.forename: Stuart K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Calderwood
authors.forename: Anthony R M
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Coates
authors.forename: Irun
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Willem
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: van Eden
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lehner
authors.forename: A Graham
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Pockley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002450:Cell Communication; D005110:Extracellular Space / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000382:microbiology; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism / Q000382:microbiology; D008070:Lipopolysaccharides / Q000276:immunology; D018832:Molecular Chaperones / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction
chemical_list: D008070:Lipopolysaccharides; D018832:Molecular Chaperones