Detection of Stress Proteins as Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress

Heat shock proteins (hsps), also known as stress proteins, are a family of ubiquitous, highly conserved proteins that have a range of essential cellular functions. These include their key roles in protein folding and assembly, as molecular chaperones in targetingproteins to specific cellular compartments, and in modulation of the immune response.As the name implies, hsps or stress proteins are expressed when cells are exposed to stressful stimuli such as oxidative stress, free radicals, or heat shock; however they are also expressed constitutively in the unstressed cell. The hsps contribute towards acytoprotective state in a number of metabolic perturbations, and the induced synthesis of hsps is associated with stress tolerance and protection against metabolic damage.This unit describes three methods for detecting stress-protein expression as a biomarker for stress induced by oxidative stress or heat shock in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).