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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Evaluation of the Impact of Protein Aggregation on Cellular Oxidative Stress in Yeast
Published on: June 23, 2018
Nonadditive effects of mixed crowding on protein stability
Jyotica Batra1, Ke Xu, Huan-Xiang Zhou
1Department of Physics and Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA.
Abstract:
The crowded environments inside cells can have significant effects on the folding stability and other biophysical properties of proteins. In this study on how macromolecular crowding affects protein folding, we took a significant step toward realistically mimicking intracellular environments by using a mixture of two crowding agents, Ficoll and dextran. We found that the mixed crowding exerts a greater stabilizing effect than the sum of the two individual crowding agents. Therefore, the composition of crowders, not just the total concentration, has a significant influence on the effects of crowding on protein folding. Since the composition of intracellular macromolecules varies within the lifetime of a cell, our finding may provide an explanation for age being an important risk factor for protein aggregation-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
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