Abstract 2018 Lon Protease: The Jaws of Life

Although we have known about the AAA+ Lon protease for over 60 years, we still don't fully understand how it maintains such exquisite specificity in identifying proteins to degrade. Based on what we know about other proteases, it is reasonable to postulate that Lon recognizes its substrates using specific sequence motifs, or degrons. However, conserved and widespread Lon recognition degrons have not been described. Rather, distinct recognition sequences are reported in the context of the substrates to which they belong.