The cold shock response in microorganisms.

Heat-shock Response in Thermophilic Microorganisms

Cold-Shock Response in Escherichia coli 193 Cold Shock Response in Escherichia coli

Sensing a sudden change of the growth temperature, all living organisms produce heat shock proteins or cold shock proteins to adapt to a given temperature. In a heat shock response, the heat shock sigma factor plays a major role in the induction of heat shock proteins including molecular chaperones and proteases, which are well-conserved from bacteria to human. In contrast, no such a sigma fact...

Cold-shock response and adaptation.

The most common stress that living organisms constantly confront in nature is likely to result from temperature changes. Figure 1 shows the temperature changes in Newark, New Jersey during a one year period. The graph shows both average highest and lowest temperatures of each month as indicated by open and solid circles, respectively. One can see that per month there is a difference of approxim...

Cold shock response in Bacillus subtilis.

Following a rapid decrease in temperature, the physiology of Bacillus subtilis cells changes profoundly. Cold shock adaptation has been monitored at the level of membrane composition, adjustment in DNA topology, and change in cytosolic protein synthesis/composition. Some major players in these processes (cold-stress induced proteins and cold acclimatization proteins, CIPs and CAPs) have been id...

Cold shock response in mammalian cells.

Compared to bacteria and plants, the cold shock response has attracted little attention in mammals except in some areas such as adaptive thermogenesis, cold tolerance, storage of cells and organs, and recently, treatment of brain damage and protein production. At the cellular level, some responses of mammalian cells are similar to microorganisms; cold stress changes the lipid composition of cel...