Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P04637 (p53)
 77,613 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Nickel (Ni) compounds are potent carcinogens and can induce malignant transformation of rodent and human cells. In an attempt to unravel the molecular mechanisms of Ni-induced transformation we investigated transcriptional activity of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF-1) and p53 tumor suppressor protein in Ni-transformed cells. We demonstrated that the activity of HIF-1-responsive promoters was increased in Ni-transformed rodent cells resulting in the increased ratio between HIF-1- and p53-stimulated transcription. To further elucidate the roles of HIF-1 and p53 in Ni-induced transformation we used human osteosarcoma (HOS) cells and a Ni-transformed derivative, SA-8 cells. Since non-functional p53 was expressed in both HOS and SA-8 cells, acute Ni treatment induced HIF-1alpha protein and HIF-1-dependent transcription without affecting p53. In MCF-7 and A549, human cancer cells with the wild-type p53, both functional p53 and HIF-1alpha proteins accumulated following exposure to Ni. The induction of HIF-1alpha and wild-type p53 by Ni was detected after 6 h and was most pronounced by 24 h. These results suggest that acute Ni treatment causes accumulation of HIF-1alpha protein and simultaneous accumulation of wild-type, but not mutant, p53. We suggest that the induction of hypoxia-like conditions in Ni-treated cells with subsequent selection for increased HIF-1-dependent transcription is involved in Ni-induced carcinogenesis.
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PMID:Nickel-induced transformation shifts the balance between HIF-1 and p53 transcription factors. 1046 29

This article considers the mechanism of nickel carcinogenesis, focusing primarily on the epigenetic changes associated with exposure of cells to carcinogenic nickel compounds. We discuss the delivery of nickel in the cell and contrast the genetic and epigenetic changes that have occurred. Within the epigenetic effects, alteration in the levels of transcription factors, such as ATF-1, p53, HIF-1, HIF-1alpha, and NFkappaB, are considered. The relationship between nickel and calcium metabolism and the role it plays in nickel carcinogenesis is also considered, as are reactive oxygen species and the interactions of nickel with proteins. We discuss these epigenetic discussions in light of the effects that nickel has on inducing DNA methylation in cells. It is of interest that nickel induces both a variety of signaling pathways as well as genes that seem to be important for the survival of cancer cells. It is also interesting that the same genes induced or repressed by nickel are similarly overexpressed or not expressed in nickel-transformed cells. It is suggested that this may represent a selection process crucial to the nickel carcinogenesis process.
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PMID:Epigenetic mechanisms of nickel carcinogenesis. 1098 97

The DNA base excision repair (BER) pathway is responsible for the repair of cellular alkylation and oxidative DNA damage. A crucial and the second step in the BER pathway involves the cleavage of baseless sites in DNA by an AP endonuclease. The major AP endonuclease in mammalian cells is Ape1/ref-1. Ape1/ref-1 is a multifunctional protein that is not only responsible for repair of AP sites, but also functions as a reduction-oxidation (redox) factor maintaining transcription factors in an active reduced state. Ape1/ref-1 has been shown to stimulate the DNA binding activity of numerous transcription factors that are involved in cancer promotion and progression such as Fos, Jun, NF(B, PAX, HIF-1(, HLF and p53. Ape1/ref-1 has also been implicated in the activation of bioreductive drugs which require reduction in order to be active and has been shown to interact with a subunit of the Ku antigen to act as a negative regulator of the parathyroid hormone promoter, as well as part of the HREBP transcription factor complex. Ape1/ref-1 levels have been found to be elevated in a number of cancers such as ovarian, cervical, prostate, rhabdomyosarcomas and germ cell tumors and correlated with the radiosensitivity of cervical cancers. In this review, we have attempted to try and assimilated as much data concerning Ape1/ref-1 and incorporate the rapidly growing information on Ape1/ref-1 in a wide variety of functions and systems.
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PMID:Going APE over ref-1. 1101 83

Mammalian cellular responses to hypoxia include adaptive metabolic changes and a G1 cell cycle arrest. Although transcriptional regulation of metabolic genes by the hypoxia-induced transcription factor (HIF-1) has been established, the mechanism for the hypoxia-induced G1 arrest is not known. By using genetically defined primary wild-type murine embryo fibroblasts and those nullizygous for regulators of the G1/S checkpoint, we observed that the retinoblastoma protein is essential for the G1/S hypoxia-induced checkpoint, whereas p53 and p21 are not required. In addition, we found that the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27 is induced by hypoxia, thereby inhibiting CDK2 activity and forestalling S phase entry through retinoblastoma protein hypophosphorylation. Reduction or absence of p27 abrogated the hypoxia-induced G1 checkpoint, suggesting that it is a key regulator of G1/S transition in hypoxic cells. Intriguingly, hypoxic induction of p27 appears to be transcriptional and through an HIF-1-independent region of its proximal promoter. This demonstration of the molecular mechanism of hypoxia-induced G1/S regulation provides insight into a fundamental response of mammalian cells to low oxygen tension.
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PMID:Hypoxia inhibits G1/S transition through regulation of p27 expression. 1111 89

Recently it has been shown that the VHL tumor suppressor targets the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (HIF-1) for ubiquitin-dependent degradation by the proteasome. Past mysteries of the p53 tumor suppressor help to solve the present puzzles of the VHL tumor suppressor. Thus, Mdm-2 targets the p53 tumor suppressor for ubiquitin-dependent degradation by the proteasome, but, in addition, the p53 transcription factor induces Mdm-2, thus, establishing a feedback loop. Hypoxia or DNA damage by abrogating binding of HIF-1 with VHL and p53 with Mdm-2, respectively, leads to stabilization and accumulation transcriptionally active HIF-1 and p53. More detailed analysis depicts the VHL/HIF-1 pair as the p53/mdm-2 pair that is turned upside down, suggesting that VHL may be a HIF-1-inducible gene of the feedback loop. The extended model proposes that an oncoprotein and a tumor suppressor due to transactivation coupled with feedback protein degradation might form functional pairs (Rb/E7, E2F/Rb, E2F/Mdm-2, catenin/APC, p27, cyclin D1, Rb/gankyrin), thus, predicting missing links.
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PMID:Do VHL and HIF-1 mirror p53 and Mdm-2? Degradation-transactivation loops of oncoproteins and tumor suppressors. 1131 69

The second enzyme in the DNA base excision repair (BER) pathway, apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) endonuclease or Ape1, hydrolyzes the phosphodiester backbone immediately 5' to an AP site generating a normal 3'-hydroxyl group and an abasic deoxyribose-5-phosphate, which is processed by subsequent enzymes of the BER pathway. AP sites are the most common form of DNA damage, and the persistence of AP sites in DNA results in a block to DNA replication, cytotoxic mutations, and genetic instability. Interestingly, Ape1/ref-1 is a multifunctional protein that not only is a DNA repair enzyme, but also functions as a redox factor maintaining transcription factors, such as Fos, Jun, nuclear factor-kappaB, PAX (paired box-containing family of genes), hypoxia inducible factor-lalpha (HIF-1alpha), HIF-1-like factor, and p53, in an active reduced state. Apel/ref-1 has also been implicated in a number of other activities, one of which is the activation of bioreductive drugs requiring reduction for activity. In this report, we present data supporting our findings that another level of posttranslational modification of Apel/ref-1 that clearly affects the AP endonuclease activity is the reduction or oxidation of this protein. Furthermore, we show data demonstrating that at least one of the sites involved in this redox regulation is the cysteine amino acid found at position 310, immediately adjacent to the crucial histidine residue at position 309 in the DNA repair active site. These findings suggest that the Apel/ref-1 protein may be much more intimately regulated at the posttranslational level than initially imagined.
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PMID:Redox regulation of the DNA repair function of the human AP endonuclease Ape1/ref-1. 1155 53

The heterodimeric hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1 is a master transcriptional regulator of oxygen homeostasis and a possible target for gene therapy of ischemic disease. Although the role of oxygen concentration in HIF-1a protein stabilization is well established, it is less clear whether and how oxygen-regulated mechanisms contribute to HIF-1a protein modifications, nuclear translocation, heterodimerization with the b-subunit, recruitment of cofactors, and gene trans-activation. Because the HIF-1a protein is proteolytically degraded under normoxic conditions, we established two HeLa Tet-Off cell lines (HT42 and HT43), which inducibly overexpress high levels of HIF-1a under normoxic conditions, allowing to distinguish hypoxia-dependent from hypoxia-independent activation mechanisms. Using these cells, we found that normoxically induced HIF-1a is localized to the nucleus, binds DNA, and trans-activates reporter and endogenous target genes. The levels of p53 expression remained unaffected. The MAP kinase inhibitor PD98059 attenuated HIF-1a protein modifications and trans-activation ability but not protein stabilization and DNA-binding activity. Because overexpressed HIF-1a is fully localized to the nucleus but displays only partial DNA-binding and trans-activation activity, mitogen-activated protein kinase-dependent phosphorylation might be required for full HIF-1 activation. HIF-1a protein was also overexpressed in vivo, following the transplantation of HT42 cells into nude mice, demonstrating the feasibility of HIF-1a gene transfer.
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PMID:Dissecting hypoxia-dependent and hypoxia-independent steps in the HIF-1alpha activation cascade: implications for HIF-1alpha gene therapy. 1160 85

Previous studies have demonstrated that phosphorylation of human p53 on serine 15 contributes to protein stabilization after DNA damage and that this is mediated by the ATM family of kinases. However, cellular exposure to hypoxia does not induce any detectable level of DNA lesions compared to ionizing radiation, and the oxygen dependency of p53 protein accumulation differs from that of HIF-1, the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor. Here we show that, under severe hypoxic conditions, p53 protein accumulates only in S phase and this accumulation correlates with replication arrest. Inhibition of ATR kinase activity substantially reduces hypoxia-induced phosphorylation of p53 protein on serine 15 as well as p53 protein accumulation. Thus, hypoxia-induced cell growth arrest is tightly linked to an ATR-signaling pathway that is required for p53 modification and accumulation. These studies indicate that the ATR kinase plays an important role during tumor development in responding to hypoxia-induced replication arrest, and hypoxic conditions could select for the loss of key components of ATR-dependent checkpoint controls.
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PMID:Hypoxia links ATR and p53 through replication arrest. 1186 61

Angiogenesis is required for the development and biologic progression of infiltrative astrocytomas and takes the form of "microvascular hyperplasia" in glioblastoma multiforme, the most malignant astrocytoma. This pathologic term refers to an abnormal vascular proliferation that is often associated with necrosis and likely originates in hypoxic zones. Both the physiologic response to hypoxia and genetic alterations contribute to this process. The presence of hypoxic regions within an expanding tumor mass leads to upregulation of pro-angiogenic factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), through increased activity of the transcriptional complex HIF-1 (hypoxia-inducible factor-1). HIF-1 mediated gene expression may be directly or indirectly modulated by alterations in oncogenes/tumor suppressor genes that occur during astrocytoma development, including PTEN, TP53, p16(CDKN2A), p14ARF, EGFR, and PDGFR. Genetic alterations are also believed to influence the HIF-independent expression of pro- and anti- angiogenic factors, such as basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), respectively. Thus, genetic events that occur during the progression of infiltrating astrocytomas promote angiogenesis, both by modulating hypoxia induced gene expression and by regulating of pro- and anti- angiogenic factors.
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PMID:Genetic modulation of hypoxia induced gene expression and angiogenesis: relevance to brain tumors. 1245 39

The carcinogenicity of nickel compounds has been shown in numerous epidemiological and animal studies. Carcinogenesis is generally considered as a multistep accumulation of genetic alterations. Nickel, however, being highly carcinogenic is only a weak mutagen. We hypothesize that nickel may act by modulating signaling pathways, and subsequently by reprogramming transcription factors. Insoluble nickel is considered to be more carcinogenic than soluble. In this study using GeneChip technology we compared changes in gene expression caused by soluble and insoluble nickel compounds. We found that both soluble and insoluble nickel compounds induce similar signaling pathways following 20 h of in vitro exposure. For example, both nickel compounds activated a number of transcription factors including hypoxia-inducible factor I (HIF-1) and p53. The induction of these important transcription factors exerts potent selective pressure leading to cell transformation. The obtained data are in agreement with our previous observations that acute nickel exposure activates HIF-1 and p53 transcription factors and in nickel-transformed cells, the ratio of HIF-I activity to p53 activity was shifted towards high HIF-I activity. The activation of the same signaling pathways by soluble and insoluble nickel compounds suggested that both nickel compounds have similar carcinogenic potential in vitro.
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PMID:GeneChip analysis of signaling pathways effected by nickel. 1272 55


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