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Kori-tofu is a traditional processed food in Japan, which is made from soybean curds availing refrigeration techniques to add an elastic texture and the low water holding capacity. These quality changes of soy bean curds occur during frozen-storage under subzero temperature, however, these mechanism have not clarified. In this study, aiming to the mechanism of these quality changes in soybean curds during the freeze-storage process, the changing of ice crystal and of a frozen concentrated solid of soybean curds and how a character in soy protein changes were examined. The result indicated that the change in the balance of hydrophilic and hydrophobic region induced by dehydration with ice recrystallization at first stage of storage plays an important role in forming the new protein-protein interaction especially for amphipathic protein as α and α' subunit of β-conglycinin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Propagation of amyloid is achieved by the combination of amyloid formation and disaggregation. Although both processes in the cell are regulated by molecular chaperones such as Hsp104 and Hsp70, the underlying molecular mechanism has remained elusive. Here we review a recent progress of metabolic regulation of amyloid fibrils, and discuss about the effects of dynamic conformational fluctuation of monomeric proteins on structural polymorphism of amyloid. The detailed analysis of the processes of amyloid formation and disaggregation by biophysical methods will provide important mechanistic insights into the cellular process responsible for amyloid propagation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protein folding is often hampered by protein aggregation, which can be prevented by a variety of chaperones in the cell. However, the relationship between the propensity to form aggregates and primary sequence and preferences of chaperones for substrates has not been understood. We comprehensively analyzed the aggregation propensity of all Escherichia coli proteins and the aggregation prevention effect of three major chaperones for aggregation-prone proteins by using a reconstituted chaperone-free translation system (PURE system). The resource obtained here can be used to investigate the properties of proteins of interest in terms of their solubilities and chaperone effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]