Yoav Barak

Abstract How biological machines utilize ATP to facilitate mechanical work remains heavily contested. ClpB is a quality control machine of the AAA+ family that salvages misfolded and aggregated proteins by forcibly translocating them through its lumen. Structural studies of this and similar machines have suggested a power-stroke translocation mechanism directly coupled to sequential subunit motion. However, functional studies have challenged this deterministic view.

Abstract Recreating the conditions for autonomous biogenesis of the protein translation machinery is fundamental to our understanding of living systems and is essential for the assembly of minimal cell models. All components of the translation machinery, including the ribosomes, translation factors and aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, are made of proteins and are therefore involved in their own synthesis, posing a unique challenge for self-biogenesis.

1 INTRODUCTION In the field of structural biology, it is currently accepted that the intracellular environment, rich with ions, metabolites, and macromolecules, can affect the stability, folding, and function of proteins via macromolecular crowding and different types of interactions with cellular components (Cohen & Pielak, 2017; Ellis, 2001; Freedberg & Selenko, 2014; Guin & Gruebele, 2019; Plitzko et al., 2017; Rivas & Minton, 2018; Zhou et al., 2008).