Roles of Protein Synthesis Elongation Factor EF-Tu in Heat Tolerance in Plants

Figure 4

EF-Tu proteins are multifunctional. (1) EF-Tu plays a required function during protein synthesis by transporting aminoacyl-tRNA complex and facilitate the complex to bind to the A site of the ribosome; (2) EF-Tu possesses chaperone activity in protecting other proteins from aggregation by binding to the hydrophobic regions of the denatured proteins; (3) EF-Tu displays a protein disulfide isomerase activity; (4) EF-Tu proteins can elicit innate immunity and trigger resistance to pathogenic bacteria; (5) when E. coli is infected with RNA phages, EF-Tu becomes a subunit of the enzyme in the transcriptional apparatus responsible for the RNA replication, suggesting that EF-Tu play a role in transcription; (6) EF-Tu can substitute EF-1α for participating in the degradation of N terminally blocked proteins by the 26S proteasome.