Proteasome
large multisubunit complex which catalyzes protein degradation, found in eukaryotes, archaea and some bacteria
Proteasomes are essential protein complexes responsible for the degradation of proteins by proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks peptide bonds. Enzymes that help such reactions are called proteases. Proteasomes are found inside all eukaryotes and archaea, and in some bacteria.
In eukaryotes, proteasomes are located both in the nucleus and in the cytoplasm. The proteasomal degradation pathway is essential for many cellular processes, including the cell cycle, the regulation of gene expression, and responses to oxidative stress. The importance of proteolytic degradation inside cells and the role of ubiquitin in proteolytic pathways was acknowledged in the award of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose.
The core 20S proteasome (blue in the adjacent figure) is a cylindrical, compartmental protein complex of four stacked rings forming a central pore. Each ring is composed of seven individual proteins. The inner two rings are made of seven β subunits that contain three to seven protease active sites, within the central chamber of the complex. Access to these proteases is gated on the top of the 20S, and access is regulated by several large protein complexes, including the 19S Regulatory Particle forming the 26S Proteasome.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Proteasome” as large multisubunit complex which catalyzes protein degradation, found in eukaryotes, archaea and some bacteria. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14878333. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Proteasome” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.