Workgroup 9 “Cellular and Organismal Proteostasis”
Thorsten Hoppe
thorsten.hoppe@uni-koeln.de
Jörg Höhfeld
hoehfeld@uni-bonn.de
Summary
Sustaining a healthy proteome is a lifelong challenge for each individual cell of an organism. Ever-changing metabolic, environmental, and pathological conditions can cause the accumulation of damaged and aggregation-prone proteins, leading to proteotoxic stress that threatens proteome integrity. Proteostasis is achieved via a conserved network of quality control pathways that orchestrate the biogenesis of correctly folded proteins, prevent proteins from misfolding, and remove potentially harmful proteins by selective degradation. Nevertheless, the proteostasis network has a limited capacity and its collapse deteriorates cellular functionality and organismal viability, causing metabolic, oncological, or neurodegenerative disorders. Proteostasis relies on cell autonomous quality control mechanisms as well as the systemic coordination of involved pathways between distinct tissues of an organism. Defining cellular and organismal proteostasis will establish fundamental biological principles and reveal therapeutic targets for protein aggregation diseases.
The workgroup brings together scientists interested in cellular and organismal proteostasis to foster the exchange of data, tools and concepts, and to promote research at this important interface of cell biology and biomedicine.