Macromolecular crowding in vitro as means of emulating cellular interiors: When less might be more
- 23 December 2008
- journal article
- Published by National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 105 (51) , E119
Abstract
Fascinating evidence was presented recently that monocrowding with Ficoll 70 (Fc70) improves the refolding speed of VlsE that was unfolded in urea (1). This demonstrated the power of macromolecular crowding as present in cellular interiors. However, we noted that the Fc70 concentrations used in this study (,1) are high enough to cause self-crowding (,2), meaning compaction of the crowder, thus diminishing its crowding capacity. In fact, as evidenced …Keywords
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