Denaturant stable and/or protease resistant, chaperone-like oligomeric proteins, polynucleotides encoding same, their uses and methods of increasing a specific activity thereof

A transgenic plant expressing a denaturant stable protein at least 65% homologous to SEQ ID NO:2, said protein being capable of forming stable dimers and having at least one conserved amino acid sequences as set forth in SEQ ID NOs:

• 36, 37 or 38 as determined using a Best Fit algorithm of GCG, Wisconsin Package Version 9.1 using a plurality of 10.00, a threshold of 4, average weight of 1.00, average match of 2.91 and average mismatch of minus 2.00;
• said denaturant stable protein having a chaperone-like activity above a natural amount of said denaturant stable protein having said chaperone-like activity in said plant.

An isolated nucleic acid comprising:

• (a) a first polynucleotide encoding a boiling stable protein at least 90% homologous to SEQ ID NO:2 said boiling stable protein having antigenic cross-reactivity with the polypeptide having an amino acid sequence as set forth SEQ ID NO:2 and being capable of forming stable dimers;
• and
• (b) a second polynucleotide including a promoter sequence being operably linked to said first polynucleotide for directing an expression of said boiling stable protein.

A transgenic plant expressing a recombinant protein at least 95% homologous to SEQ ID NO:2.