Role of Heat Shock Proteins in Oxidative Stress and Stress Tolerance

Heat shock proteins (HSP) also referred to as stress proteins are a family of proteins produced by cells in response to exposure to stressful conditions like heat, cold, different kinds of environmental stress, such as infection, inflammation, exercise, exposure of the cell to toxins (ethanol, arsenic, trace metals, and UV light, among many others), starvation, hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), nitrogen deficiency (in plants), water deprivation and during wound healing or tissue remodeling. In this review, the authors have elucidated the role of heat shock proteins in stress tolerance both in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Here, the role of heat shock proteins in survival during more extreme conditions and maintenance of normal cellular homeostasis have also been briefly discussed.