Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0004135 (ATM)
 13,001 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A proportion of the population is exposed to acute doses of ionizing radiation through medical treatment or occupational accidents, with little knowledge of the immediate effects. At the cellular level, ionizing radiation leads to the activation of a genetic program which enables the cell to increase its chances of survival and to minimize detrimental manifestations of radiation damage. Cytotoxic stress due to ionizing radiation causes genetic instability, alterations in the cell cycle, apoptosis, or necrosis. Alterations in the G1, S and G2 phases of the cell cycle coincide with improved survival and genome stability. The main cellular factors which are activated by DNA damage and interfere with the cell cycle controls are: p53, delaying the transition through the G1-S boundary; p21WAF1/CIP1, preventing the entrance into S-phase; proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and replication protein A (RPA), blocking DNA replication; and the p53 variant protein p53 as together with the retinoblastoma protein (Rb), with less defined functions during the G2 phase of the cell cycle. By comparing a variety of radioresistant cell lines derived from radiosensitive ataxia telangiectasia cells with the parental cells, some essential mechanisms that allow cells to gain radioresistance have been identified. The results so far emphasise the importance of an adequate delay in the transition from G2 to M and the inhibition of DNA replication in the regulation of the cell cycle after exposure to ionizing radiation.
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PMID:Regulation of the cell cycle following DNA damage in normal and Ataxia telangiectasia cells. 862 Sep 34

Breast cancer, one of the most common and deleterious of all diseases affecting women, occurs in hereditary and sporadic forms. Hereditary breast cancers are genetically heterogeneous; susceptibility is variously attributable to germline mutations in the BRCA1 (ref. 1), BRCA2 (ref. 2), TP53 (ref. 3) or ataxia telangiectasia (ATM) genes, each of which is considered to be a tumour suppressor. Recently a number of germline mutations in the BRCA2 gene have been identified in families prone to breast cancer. We screened 100 primary breast cancers from Japanese patients for BRCA2 mutations, using PCR-SSCP. We found two germline mutations and one somatic mutation in our patient group. One of the germline mutations was an insertion of an Alu element into exon 22, which resulted in alternative splicing that skipped exon 22. The presence of a 64-bp polyadenylate tract and evidence for an 8-bp target-site duplication of the inserted DNA implied that the retrotransposal insertion of a transcriptionally active Alu element caused this event. Our results indicate that somatic BRCA2 mutations, like somatic mutations in the BRCA1 gene, are very rare in primary breast cancers.
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PMID:Mutation analysis in the BRCA2 gene in primary breast cancers. 864 Feb 37

Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) is a recessive genetic disease featuring neurodegeneration, immunodeficiency, chromosomal instability, radiation hypersensitivity, and increased predisposition to cancer. Reduced or delayed induction of the tumor suppressor protein p53 after gamma -irradiation was reported. These characteristics may be compatible with an inability to correctly regulate apoptosis. We show here that AT lymphocytes and EBV-transformed lymphoblasts demonstrate a significantly higher level of spontaneous apoptosis, whereas ionizing radiation-induced apoptosis is reduced compared to normal cells. However, neither AT nor normal primary fibroblasts undergo apoptosis after irradiation. Consequently, we conclude that the radiosensitivity of the AT cells is not related to an increased apoptotic response. Finally, we show that SV40-transformed AT fibroblasts undergo gamma- ray-induced apoptosis, while SV40-transformed normal cells do not. This result raises the question of the physiological relevance of the latter cellular model with respect to the AT phenotype.
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PMID:Deregulated apoptosis in ataxia telangiectasia: association with clinical stigmata and radiosensitivity. 864 Aug 31

Approximately 20% of breast cancer patients have a family history of the disease, and in one-fourth of these cases breast cancer appears to be inherited as an autosomally dominant trait. Five genes and gene regions involved in breast cancer susceptibility have been uncovered. Germ-line mutations in the recently cloned BRCA1 gene at 17q21 is considered to be responsible for the disease in a majority of the breast-ovarian cancer families and in 40-45% of the site-specific breast cancer families, but appears not to be involved in families with both male and female breast cancer cases. The BRCA2 locus at 13q12-q13 appears to be involved in 40-45% of the site-specific breast cancer families, and in most of the families with affected males. The gene located in this region, however, does not seem to confer susceptibility to ovarian cancer. The TP53 gene is involved in breast cancer development in the Li-Fraumeni syndrome and Li-Fraumeni syndrom-like families, whereas germ-line mutations in the androgen receptor (AR) gene is present in a subset of male breast cancers. Furthermore, females who are obligate carriers of ataxia telangiectasia (AT) have a 4-12 times relative risk of developing breast cancer as compared with the general female population, indicating that germ-line mutations in AT also confer susceptibility to breast cancer.
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PMID:Genetic heterogeneity in breast cancer susceptibility. 869 52

Several reports have demonstrated a defective p53 response to ionizing radiation exposure in ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) cells. On the other hand, p53 induction was normal after u.v. irradiation, an agent to which A-T cells are not hypersensitive. We show here that A-T cells are more sensitive than normal lymphoblastoid cells to cisplatin treatment but the rate of induction of p53 by cisplatin is similar in both cell types. In addition, the half-life of p53, both in the induced and uninduced forms, is the same in A-T and normal lymphoblastoid cells. The use of a reporter assay to determine the functional status of p53 confirmed the results obtained in the induction experiments with cisplatin. These results demonstrate that p53 induction status in A-T cells does not correlate with sensitivity to the inducting agent and there is no inherent defect in the turn-over of p53 in the induced or uninduced states in A-T.
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PMID:Induction of p53 and increased sensitivity to cisplatin in ataxia-telangiectasia cells. 876 Mar 8

Susceptibility to environmental carcinogenesis is the consequence of a complex interplay between intrinsic hereditary factors and actual exposures to potential carcinogenic agents. We must learn the nature of these interactions as well as the genetic defects that confer enhanced risk. In some genetic diseases an increased cancer risk correlates with a defect in the repair or replications of damaged DNA. Examples include xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), ataxia telangiectasia, Fanconi's anemia, and Bloom's syndrome. In Cockayne's syndrome the Specific defect in transcription-coupled repair (TCR) does not predispose the patients to the sunlight-induced skin cancer characteristic of XP. The demonstration of TCR in the XP129 partial revertant of XP-A cells indicates that ultraviolet (UV) resistance correlates with repair of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers in active genes. Repair measured as an average over the genome can be misleading, and it is necessary to consider genomic locations of DNA damage and repair for a meaningful assessment of the biological importance of particular DNA lesions. Mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene are found in many human tumors. TCR accounts for the resulting mutational spectra in the p53 gene in certain tumors. Li-Fraumeni syndrome fibroblasts expressing only mutant p53 are more UV-resistant and exhibit less UV-induced apoptosis than normal human cells or heterozygotes for mutations in only one allele of p53. The p53-defective cells are deficient in global excision repair capacity but have retained TCR. The loss of p53 function may lead to greater genomic instability by reducing the efficiency of global DNA repair while cellular resistance may be assured through the operation of TCR and the elimination of apoptosis.
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PMID:Role of transcription-coupled DNA repair in susceptibility to environmental carcinogenesis. 878 81

The DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK), whose catalytic subunit shows structural similarities to the Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) gene product (ATM), has also been implicated in the p53-mediated signal transduction pathway that activates the cellular response to DNA damage produced by ionizing radiation. DNA-PK activity however was not found to be related to the transcriptional induction of WAFl/CIP1(p2l) in AT lymphoblastoid cell lines, following treatment with ionizing radiation. Normal protein and transcription levels of Ku70 and Ku80, as well as DNA-PK activity, were found in six different AT cell lines, 1-4 h following exposure to ionizing radiation, timepoints where reduced and delayed transcriptional induction of WAF1/CIP1 (p21) was observed. WAF1/CIP1 (p21) was found to be transcriptionally induced by p53 in normal cell lines over this same time period following exposure to ionizing radiation. These results suggest that despite the findings that in vitro DNA-PK may phosphorylate p53, in vivo it would not appear to play a central role in the activation of p53 as a transcription factor nor can it substitute for the ATM gene product in the cellular response following exposure to ionizing radiation.
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PMID:The role of Ataxia telangiectasia and the DNA-dependent protein kinase in the p53-mediated cellular response to ionising radiation. 880 86

The p53 gene product is part of a pathway regulating growth arrest at the G1 checkpoint of the cell cycle. Mutation of other components of this pathway, including the products of the ataxia telangiectasia (AT), GADD45, mdm2, and p21WAF1/CIP1 genes may have effects comparable to mutations in the p53 gene. The GADD45 gene is induced by ionizing radiation and several DNA-damaging xenobiotics. Induction requires the binding of wild-type p53 to an evoulutionarily highly conserved putative intronic p53 binding site in intron 3 of GADD45. We recently analyzed the entire coding region of the p53 gene in primary breast cancers of Midwestern white women and found 21 mutations among 53 tumors (39.6%). We now have shown by direct sequencing that there are no mutations in the intronic p53 binding site of the GADD45 gene in any of the 53 primary breast cancers and no mutations in the entire coding region of the GADD45 gene in a subset of 26 consecutive tumors (12 with p53 mutation and 14 without p53 mutation). The only sequence variation detected was a common polymorphism in intron 3. The absence of mutations in the GADD45 gene, including the putative p53-binding intronic site, suggests that this gene is not a frequent target of mutations in breast cancer. Although mutations of the p53 gene have been studied in a wide spectrum of human cancers, GADD45 has not been examined in any tumor or cell line to the best of our knowledge. Our results raise the possibility that mutation of the GADD45 gene alone is not functionally equivalent to loss of wild-type p53 activity.
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PMID:A polymorphism but no mutations in the GADD45 gene in breast cancers. 883 60

The gene mutated in ataxia-telangiectasia (AT) patients, denoted ATM, encodes a putative protein or lipid kinase. To elucidate the functions of ATM, we disrupted the mouse ATM gene through homologous recombination in mice. Consistent with cellular defects of AT patients, the ATM-/- cells are hypersensitive to gamma-irradiation and defective in cell-cycle arrest following radiation, correlating with a defective up-regulation of p53. In addition, ATM-/- mouse thymocytes are more resistant to apoptosis induced by gamma-irradiation than normal thymocytes. ATM-/- fibroblasts are inefficient in G1 to S-phase progression following serum stimulation and senesce after only a few passages in culture. They have an increased constitutive level of p21CP1/WAF1. The ATM protein is therefore critical both for cellular responses to ionizing radiation and for normal cell-cycle progression. ATM+/- fibroblasts and thymocytes showed intermediately defective responses to irradiation but no growth defect, suggesting that the increased cancer risk of AT heterozygotes could be attributable to poor checkpoint function.
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PMID:Dual roles of ATM in the cellular response to radiation and in cell growth control. 884 91

The radiation hypersensitivity disorder ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) is uniquely characterized by a failure to immediately inhibit DNA synthesis in response to low dose ionizing radiation which is referred to as radioresistant DNA synthesis (RDS). As it remains controversial as to whether p53 abnormalities are central to RDS and the A-T radiation hypersensitivity disorder, post-irradiation p53 responses and cell cycle alterations were investigated in EBV immortalized B cells (LCL's) from normal individuals (N LCL's) and A-T patients (A-T LCL's). Here it is shown that mutations in p53 are insufficient to give cells such as HL-60 cells RDS potential. Furthermore, RDS which is demonstrable at 2 Gy, does not correlate with radiation induced alterations in p53 or with alterations in the Gt/S block. However, at 10 Gy, abnormalities in p53 and cell cycle changes were noted for A-T LCL's. Although the results suggest that p53 abnormalities are not central to RDS or the A-T ionizing radiation hypersensitivity disorder, the demonstration of a threshold effect for secondary abnormalities in p53 and cell cycle changes post-irradiation, may help resolve conflicting reports on the involvement of p53 downstream of the central defect in A-T.
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PMID:Alterations in p53 do not correlate with radioresistant DNA synthesis. 891 92


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