Scientists have identified the first gene with a strong resemblance to the p53 gene, a tumor suppressor significantly linked to near half of all human cancers. The researchers hope that the new gene, described in issue tomorrow Cell , give them a better understanding of the origins of many common cancers.
geneticist Daniel Caput and colleagues at the pharmaceutical company Sanofi Research in Toulouse, France, arrived on the new gene when looking for cell receptors of the immune system. When the French team tested a gene that came in the research, they were shocked to find that its sequence reminded p53 , a "security guard" cell that stops cell division when DNA damaged and allows the cell to make repairs. They then contacted their longtime collaborator Frank McKeon, who studies gene expression and cell division at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Looking more closely, the team found striking parallels between p53 and the new protein, called p73. A p73 section closely resembles the so-called "core binding region" where p53 binds to DNA. Equally interesting, the p73 gene resides in a region chromosome 1, designed to host multiple suppressor genes unidentified tumors. (This area is lost in about half of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma nervous system, and in some melanomas and some cancers of the breast and colon.)
But the key evidence of tumor suppression is still lacking. When checked, several lines of neuroblastoma cells lacked mutations p73 would lead to rampant cell growth. as these mutations are found, or someone finds an inherited mutation of the gene in people with some form of hereditary cancer, it is "still to win" if p73 is a tumor suppressor says geneticist Bert Vogelstein cancer of the school of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
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