Energy landscape remodeling mechanism of Hsp70-chaperone-accelerated protein folding.

Abstract Hsp70 chaperone is one of the key protein machines responsible for the quality control of protein production in cells. Facilitating in vivo protein folding by counteracting misfolding and aggregation is the essence of its biological functions. Although the allosteric cycle during its functional actions has been well characterized both experimentally and computationally, by what mechanism the Hsp70 assists protein folding is still not fully understood. In this work, we studied the Hsp70 mediated folding of model proteins with rugged energy landscape by using molecular simulations. Different from the canonical scenario of the Hsp70 functioning, which assumes that folding of substrate proteins occurs spontaneously after releasing from chaperones, our results showed that the substrate protein remains in contacts with the chaperone during its folding process. The direct chaperone-substrate interactions at the open conformation of the Hsp70 tends to shield the substrate sites prone to form non-native contacts, which therefore avoids the frustrated folding pathway, leading to higher folding rate and less probability of misfolding. Our results suggest that in addition to the unfoldase and holdase functions widely addressed in previous studies, the Hsp70 can facilitate the folding of its substrate proteins by remodeling the folding energy landscape and directing the folding processes, demonstrating the foldase scenario. These findings added new insights into the general molecular mechanisms of chaperone mediated protein folding.