The term chaperone when used in relation to proteins may appear to the uninitiated as a kind of metaphor, but the term has acquired a fixed technical meaning in biology and medicine.
"In molecular biology, molecular chaperones are proteins that assist the conformational folding or unfolding of large proteins or macromolecular protein complexes. There are a number of classes of molecular chaperones, all of which function to assist large proteins in proper protein folding during or after synthesis, and after partial denaturation. Chaperones are also involved in the translocation of proteins for proteolysis."
