Bacterial Cold Shock Proteins - the Molecular Chaperones for Multiple Stress Tolerance

Bacteria overcome the cold environmental conditions by inducing cold shock proteins (Csps) in response to rapid downshift temperature. Due to cold shock, membrane fluidity decreases, resulting in stabilization of nucleic acid secondary structures and impairment of overall metabolic activities. Csps are highly conserved structural proteins that bind to RNA binding motifs RNP-1 and RNP-2. Cold Shock Domain (CSD) is the characteristic feature of Csps, and conserved across bacteria, animals, and plants. However, in humans, CSD are represented as Y-box proteins. Csp homologs have been identified in plants which play a major role in cold, salt, and drought stress tolerance. Overexpression of Csps in plants resulted in high accumulation of proline, antioxidative activity with improved yield. The present mini-review focuses on the activity of Csps with special emphasis on their homologs which has not been covered earlier.