Description
GrpE is an acidic 24 kDa protein which is encoded by a monocistronic Escherichia coli gene (located at 56 min.) which is under the control of both s32 and s70 transcription factors. The GrpE protein is a so-called cochaperone because it is known to assist the DnaK (Hsp70) protein to effectively carry out DnaK-dependent chaperone activity (i.e. protein folding, protein transport, disaggregation of heat inactivated proteins, activation of mutant protein). This auxiliary role is critical to DnaK's chaperone biology since the grpE gene could not be deleted in a wild type