Small heat shock proteins (sHsps) are a ubiquitous family of molecular chaperones that
suppress the unspecific aggregation of miscellaneous proteins. Multicellular organisms
contain a large number of different sHsps, raising questions as to whether they function
redundantly or are specialized in terms of substrates and mechanism. To gain insight into
this issue, we undertook a comparative analysis of the eight major human sHsps on the
aggregation of both model proteins and cytosolic lysates under standardized conditions. We …