Endoplasmic Reticulum-associated Proteins Degradation

Endoplasmic retimulum-associated protein degradation (ERAD) is an important pathway for proteins quality control in eukaryotic cells. ERAD undertakes the identification, sorting and degradation of malfolded proteins or aberrant proteins to prevent toxification by the accumulation of misfloded proteins in ER. ERAD mainly includes three-step process: the first is the recognition of aberrant or malfolded ER proteins, in second step, degradation substrates are retrograde transported from the ER back into the cytoplasm, in the final step, aberrant proteins are degraded by the cytosolic ubiquitin/proteasome pathway. Some human diseases closely link ERAD and certain viruses are able to exploit the host ERAD machinery to escape the immune surveillance and attacking.