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Volume 4 Number 4  October 30, 2008

Organisms have developed a number of different strategies to cope with unfavorable changes in their environment.  The stress responses are characterized by a rapid increase in the expression of a selected group of proteins, termed “molecular chaperones”, that protect cells and the whole organism from severe damage.  Although until today many researchers investigated the roles of molecular chaperones in the processes of apoptosis and tumorigenesis, most of the studies have been performed on single protein-protein interaction but not on multiple chaperone-chaperone or chaperone-interactors networks.  In this issue, Czarnecka et al. suggest that analysis of multi-protein complexes would reflect the situation in vivo to a large degree and could better represent the dynamic complexity, displayed by biological systems.  Understanding of the hierarchical structure and multi-dimensional protein network of biological system is key to the understanding of its physiology and development.

For details, please read the review article [4(4): 99-108].