Publications by Paolo De Los Rios

Clearing the protein clutter in human cells: the role of protein disaggregases

Cells rely on multiple protein quality control (PQC) pathways, including molecular chaperone-assisted folding and degradation systems, to maintain proteome integrity and functionality. These pathways work together to reduce the risk of toxic protein aggreg ...

2025

Hsp110 Nucleotide Exchange Factors may amplify Hsp70-disaggregation by enhanced entropic pulling

Paolo De Los Rios, Mathieu Rebeaud, Bruno Claude Daniel Fauvet

Hsp70s use energy from ATP hydrolysis to unfold protein structures and solubilize stable aggregates and accumulate native species, even under adverse non-native conditions. To carry out its catalytic polypeptide-unfolding activity, Hsp70 needs to reversibl ...

Elsevier BV2025

Minimal Model for Carnot Efficiency at Maximum Power

Paolo De Los Rios, Shiling Liang

Carnot efficiency sets a fundamental upper bound on the heat engine efficiency, attainable in the quasistatic limit, albeit at the cost of completely sacrificing power output. Here, we present a minimal heat engine model that can attain Carnot efficiency w ...

2025

Phase boundaries promote chemical reactions through localized fluxes

Paolo De Los Rios, Alexandra Shelest, Hugo Camille Valentin Le Roy

One of the hypothesized functions of biomolecular condensates is to act as chemical reactors, where chemical reactions can be modulated, i.e., accelerated or slowed down, while substrate molecules enter and products exit from the condensate. Similarly, the ...

2025

Thermodynamic Bounds on Symmetry Breaking in Linear and Catalytic Biochemical Systems

Paolo De Los Rios, Shiling Liang

Living systems are maintained out of equilibrium by external driving forces. At stationarity, they exhibit emergent selection phenomena that break equilibrium symmetries and originate from the expansion of the accessible chemical space due to nonequilibriu ...

2024

Autorepression of yeast Hsp70 cochaperones by intramolecular interactions involving their J-domains

Paolo De Los Rios, Satyam Tiwari, Pierre Goloubinoff, Bruno Claude Daniel Fauvet, Mathieu Rebeaud, Adélaïde Alice Mohr

The 70 kDa heat shock protein (Hsp70) chaperones control protein homeostasis in all ATP-containing cellular compartments. J-domain proteins (JDPs) coevolved with Hsp70s to trigger ATP hydrolysis and catalytically upload various substrate polypeptides in ne ...

Elsevier Science Inc2024

J-domain proteins: From molecular mechanisms to diseases

Paolo De Los Rios, Mathieu Rebeaud

Here, we report on the latest findings related to JDP functions presented at a dedicated JDP workshop in Gdansk, Poland. The report does not include all (details) of what was shared and discussed at the meeting, because some of these original data have not ...

2024

Single-molecule evidence of Entropic Pulling by Hsp70 chaperones

Paolo De Los Rios, Chan Cao, Mathieu Rebeaud

Hsp70 chaperones are central components of the cellular network that ensures the structural quality of proteins. Despite crucial roles in processes such as protein disaggregation and protein translocation into organelles, their physical mechanism of action ...

Nature Research2024

An outmoded in vitro-inferred mechanism for chaperonin-accelerated protein refolding is confirmed in cells by cryo-electron tomography

Paolo De Los Rios, Mathieu Rebeaud

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC2024

ABC transporters are billion-year-old Maxwell Demons

Paolo De Los Rios, Solange Marie Flatt, Daniel Maria Busiello, Stefano Zamuner

ATP-Binding Cassette (ABC) transporters are a broad family of biological machines, found in most prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, performing the crucial import or export of substrates through both plasma and organellar membranes, and maintaining a steady ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023