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It is generally accepted that the information necessary to specify the native, functional, three-dimensional structure of a protein is encoded entirely within its amino acid sequence; however, efficient reversible folding and unfolding is observed only with a subset of small single-domain proteins. Refolding experiments often lead to the formation of kinetically-trapped, misfolded species that aggregate, even in dilute solution. In the cellular environment, the barriers to efficient protein folding and maintenance of native structure are even larger due to the nature of this process. First, nascent polypeptides must fold in an extremely crowded environment where the concentration of macromolecules approaches 300-400 mg/mL and on average, each ribosome is within its own diameter of another ribosome (1-3). These conditions of severe molecular crowding, coupled with high concentrations of nascent polypeptide chains, favor nonspecific aggregation over productive folding (3). Second, folding of newly-translated polypeptides occurs in the context of their vehtorial synthesis process. Amino acids are added to a growing nascent chain at the rate of -5 residues per set, which means that for a 300 residue protein its N-terminus will be exposed to the cytosol {approx}1 min before its C-terminus and be free to begin the folding process. However, because protein …