Heat shock factors: Integrators of cell stress, development and lifespan

Malin Åkerfelt, Richard I. Morimoto, Lea Sistonen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

1103 Scopus citations

Abstract

Heat shock factors (HSFs) are essential for all organisms to survive exposures to acute stress. They are best known as inducible transcriptional regulators of genes encoding molecular chaperones and other stress proteins. Four members of the HSF family are also important for normal development and lifespan-enhancing pathways, and the repertoire of HSF targets has thus expanded well beyond the heat shock genes. These unexpected observations have uncovered complex layers of post-translational regulation of HSFs that integrate the metabolic state of the cell with stress biology, and in doing so control fundamental aspects of the health of the proteome and ageing.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)545-555
Number of pages11
JournalNature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology
Volume11
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2010

Funding

We apologize to our colleagues whose original work could only be cited indirectly owing to space limitations. Members of our laboratories are acknowledged for valuable comments on the manuscript. Our own work is supported by The Academy of Finland, The Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, The Finnish Cancer Organizations and Åbo Akademi University. The image in box 2 is courtesy of A. Sandqvist, Department of Biosciences, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Molecular Biology
  • Cell Biology

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