Heat Shock Proteins and Human Disease

At first sight it appears unlikely that a phenomenon which was first observed in 1962 as the appearance of specific puffs in the salivary gland chromosomes of the larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila busckii following exposure to elevated temperature [1] should, nearly 30 years later, attract considerable attention from clinicians and scientists interested in such diverse phenomena as autoimmune diabetes and myocardial infarction [2, 3]. The aim of this review is to discuss the information which has been accumulated about the heat shock proteins in the 30 years since their discovery and to indicate how this information has led to studies on their possible role in human disease.