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AAA+ ATPases: Achieving Diversity of Function with Conserved Machinery
Author(s) -
White Susan Roehl,
Lauring Brett
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
traffic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.677
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1600-0854
pISSN - 1398-9219
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0854.2007.00642.x
Subject(s) - biology , aaa proteins , organelle , computational biology , mechanism (biology) , atpase , molecular machine , microbiology and biotechnology , function (biology) , transport protein , genetics , biochemistry , enzyme , philosophy , epistemology
AAA+ adenosine triphosphatases (ATPases) are molecular machines that perform a wide variety of cellular functions. For instance, they can act in vesicle transport, organelle assembly, membrane dynamics and protein unfolding. In most cases, the ATPase domains of these proteins assemble into active ring‐shaped hexamers. As AAA+ proteins have a common structure, a central issue is determining how they use conserved mechanistic principles to accomplish specific biological actions. Here, we review the features and motifs that partially define AAA+ domains, describe the cellular activities mediated by selected AAA+ proteins and discuss the recent work, suggesting that various AAA+ machines with very different activities employ a common core mechanism. The importance of this mechanism to human health is demonstrated by the number of genetic diseases caused by mutant AAA+ proteins.