This review summarizes experimental data illuminating the mechanism of suppression of heat-induced protein aggregation by a-crystallin, one of the small heat shock proteins. The dynamic light scattering data show that the initial stage of thermal aggregation of proteins is the formation of the initial aggregates involving hundreds of molecules of the denatured protein. Further sticking of the starting aggregates proceeds in a regime of diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation. The protective effect of a-crystallin is due to transition of the aggregation process to the regime of reaction-limited cluster-cluster aggregation, wherein the sticking probability for the colliding particles becomes lower than unity.

The methodology for quantification of the anti-aggregation activity of protein and chemical chaperones has been elaborated. The applicability of this methodology was demonstrated using a test-system based on dithiothreitol-induced aggregation of bovine serum albumin at 45°C as an example. Methods for calculating the initial rate of bovine serum albumin aggregation (v_agg) have been discussed. The comparison of the dependences of v_agg on concentrations of intact and cross-linked α-crystallin allowed us to make a conclusion that a non-linear character of the dependence of v_agg on concentration of intact α-crystallin was due to the dynamic mobility of the quaternary structure of α-crystallin and polydispersity of the α-crystallin–target protein complexes. To characterize the anti-aggregation activity of the chemical chaperones (arginine, arginine ethyl ester, arginine amide and proline), the semi-saturation concentration [L]_0.5 was used. Among the chemical chaperones studied, arginine ethyl ester and arginine amide reveal the highest anti-aggregation activity ([L]_0.5 = 53 and 58 mM, respectively).