Dietary Nutrients and Bioactive Substances Modulate Heat Shock Protein (HSP) Expression: A Review

Abstract

Interest in the heat shock proteins (HSPs), as a natural physiological toolkit of living organisms, has ranged from their chaperone function in nascent proteins to the remedial role following cell stress. As part of the defence system, HSPs guarantee cell tolerance against a variety of stressors, including exercise, oxidative stress, hyper and hypothermia, hyper and hypoxia and improper diets. For the past couple of decades, research on functional foods has revealed a number of substances likely to trigger cell protection through mechanisms that involve the induction of HSP expression. This review will summarize the occurrence of the most easily inducible HSPs and describe the effects of dietary proteins, peptides, amino acids, probiotics, high-fat diets and other food-derived substances reported to induce HSP response in animals and humans studies. Future research may clarify the mechanisms and explore the usefulness of this natural alternative of defense and the modulating mechanism of each substance.

Keywords: bioactive peptide; obesity; whey protein.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the role of the classical heat shock-response inducers, now adding nutrients and bioactives. The two kinds of inducers could act individually or in an additive fashion. Explanation: (left side) an ingested nutrient or bioactive could enter directly both the cytoplasm and nucleus as such or be transformed by the microbiota (extracellularly to the host) or by the host’s (intracellularly) own metabolism. On the right-hand side, the classical scheme showing the induction of HSPs that requires the dissociation of the HSP-HSF complex and the participation of HSF in the production of HSP in the nucleus.