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The N-End Rule of Selective Protein Turnover

Mechanistic Aspects and Functional Implications

  • Chapter
Ubiquitin

Abstract

In both bacterial and eukaryotic cells, relatively long-lived proteins, whose half-lives are close to or exceed the cell generation time, coexist with proteins whose half-lives can be less than 1% of the cell generation time. Rates of intracellular protein degradation are a function of the cell’s physiological state and appear to be controlled differentially for individual proteins.1–7 In particular, damaged and some otherwise abnormal proteins are metabolically unstable.1–10 It is also clear that many otherwise undamaged regulatory proteins are extremely short-lived in vivo.1–23 Metabolic instability of such proteins allows for efficient temporal control of their intracellular concentrations through regulated changes in rates of their synthesis or degradation. Instances in which the metabolic instability of an intracellular protein is known to be directly relevant to its function include the cII protein of bacteriophage λ (cII is the essential component of a molecular switch that determines whether λ grows lytically or lysogenizes an infected cell),16–18 the σ32 factor of the Escherichia coli RNA polymerase (σ32 confers on RNA polymerase the specificity for promoters of heat-shock genes),15,19–21 and the HO endonuclease of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (HO is a site-specific endodeoxyribonuclease that initiates the process of mating-type interconversion in yeast).22,23

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA

    Alexander Varshavsky, Andreas Bachmair, Daniel Finley, David Gonda & Ingrid Wünning

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  1. Alexander Varshavsky
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  2. Andreas Bachmair
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  3. Daniel Finley
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  4. David Gonda
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  5. Ingrid Wünning
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  1. Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84132, USA

    Martin Rechsteiner

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Varshavsky, A., Bachmair, A., Finley, D., Gonda, D., Wünning, I. (1988). The N-End Rule of Selective Protein Turnover. In: Rechsteiner, M. (eds) Ubiquitin. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2049-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2049-2_12

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