Heat shock factors: integrators of cell stress, development and lifespan

Heat shock factors (HSFs) are essential for survival in a stressful environment. HSFs mediate the heat shock response by binding heat shock elements present in heat shock protein (HSP) genes, thereby mediating their transcription. They are also important regulators of development, lifespan and disease. Heat shock factors (HSFs) are essential for all organisms to survive exposures to acute stress. They are best known as inducible transcriptional regulators of genes encoding molecular chaperones and other stress proteins. Four members of the HSF family are also important for normal development and lifespan-enhancing pathways, and the repertoire of HSF targets has thus expanded well beyond the heat shock genes. These unexpected observations have uncovered complex layers of post-translational regulation of HSFs that integrate the metabolic state of the cell with stress biology, and in doing so control fundamental aspects of the health of the proteome and ageing.