Our image was selected as a cover article for the 21st December edition of JBC!

The image represents different orientations of the tetrahedral assembly of a wheat small heat shock protein (sHSP). These proteins form dimers, that in turn assemble in more complex architectures.

In our work we show that sHSP dimers (a single one highlighted in yellow in the image) are in equilibrium with the oligomeric form and act as the initial encounter species to capture denaturing substrates.

[image produced with VMD with Tachyon ray tracing, and composed with Gimp with help of Valentina Erastova]