As a member of intrinsically unstructured protein family, beta-casein (beta-CN) contains relatively high amount of prolyl residues, adopts noncompact and flexible structure and exhibits chaperone-like activity in vitro. Like many chaperones, native beta-CN does not contain cysteinyl residues and exhibits strong tendencies for self-association. The chaperone-like activities of three recombinant beta-CNs wild type (WT) beta-CN, C4 beta-CN (with cysteinyl residue in position 4) and C208 beta-CN (with cysteinyl residue in position 208), expressed and purified from E. coli, which, consequently, lack the phosphorylated residues, were examined and compared with that of native beta-CN using insulin and alcohol dehydrogenase as target/substrate proteins. The dimers (beta-CND) of C4-beta-CN and C208 beta-CN were also studied and their chaperone-like activities were compared with those of their monomeric forms. Lacking phosphorylation, WT beta-CN, C208 beta-CN, C4 beta-CN and C4 beta-CND exhibited significantly lower chaperone-like activities than native beta-CN. Dimerization of C208 beta-CN with two distal hydrophilic domains considerably improved its chaperone-like activity in comparison with its monomeric form. The obtained results demonstrate the significant role played by the polar contributions of phosphorylated residues and N-terminal hydrophilic domain as important functional elements in enhancing the chaperone-like activity of native beta-CN. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 91: 623-632, 2009.This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The "Published Online" date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at biopolymers@wiley.com.