The regulation of p53 function: Steiner award lecture

✍ Scribed by D. P. Lane

• Book ID: 102866854
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 565 KB
• Volume: 57
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910570502

✦ Synopsis

Thep53 tumour suppressor gene acts to prevent the development of cancer (Donehower et al., 1992). It does so as "the guardian of the genome" (Lane, 1992) by blocking the division of cells that have sustained DNA damage and in some cases triggering cell death by apoptosis (Lane, 1993). This function ofp53 must often be rate limiting as inactivation ofp53 is one of the most common molecular steps in the development of cancer (Hollstein et al., 1991). Study of the regulation ofp53 function has shown that the protein is controlled by at least 3 general mechanisms. The first is a post-translational regulation of the protein's half-life (Maltzman and Czyzyk, 1984), the second is by the binding of specific viral and host proteins (Lane and Crawford, 1979;Sarnow et al., 1982; Scheffner et al., 1990) and the third is a form of allosteric regulation brought about by post-translational modification (Hupp et al., 1992). A full understanding of the operation of these mechanisms will lead the way forward to the clinical application of novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches based on thep53 system.