p53 tagged posts

Fever Drives Enhanced Activity, Mitochondrial Damage in Immune Cells

(Adobe Stock/Diana Duren)

Fever temperatures rev up immune cell metabolism, proliferation and activity, but they also — in a particular subset of T cells — cause mitochondrial stress, DNA damage and cell death, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered.

The findings, published Sept. 20 in the journal Science Immunology, offer a mechanistic understanding for how cells respond to heat and could explain how chronic inflammation contributes to the development of cancer.

The impact of fever temperatures on cells is a relatively understudied area, said Jeff Rathmell, PhD, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Immunobiology and corresponding author of the new study...

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Study finds Protein p53 Regulates Learning, Memory and Sociability in Mice

Protein p53 regulates learning, memory, sociability in mice
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology led by Professor Nien-Pei Tsai (right) and Kwan Young Lee have established the protein p53 as critical for regulating sociability, repetitive behavior, and hippocampus-related learning and memory in mice, illuminating the relationship between the protein-coding gene TP53 and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like autism spectrum disorder. Credit: University of Illinois/L. Brian Stauffer

Researchers have established the protein p53 as critical for regulating sociability, repetitive behavior, and hippocampus-related learning and memory in mice, illuminating the relationship between the protein-coding gene TP53 and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like ...

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The ‘Guardian of the Genome’ Protects against Cardiovascular Disease

The 'guardian of the genome' protects against cardiovascular disease
The analysis of human samples and animal experiments demonstrate that the presence of p53 gene mutations in the blood increases the risk of developing atherosclerosis, the principle cause of cardiovascular disease. Credit: CNIC

A team at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), working in collaboration with institutes in the U.S., has demonstrated that acquired mutations in the gene encoding the protein p53 contribute to the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Known as the “guardian of the genome,” p53 helps to maintain the integrity of the hereditary material inside cells by regulating multiple cell functions in response to cellular stresses.

Every day, an adult person generates hundreds of thousands of blood cells...

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Spider Silk can Stabilize Cancer-Suppressing Protein

•p53 is poorly expressed and conformationally unstable
•A spider silk domain boosts p53 translation in vitro
•The spider silk-p53 fusion protein adopts a compact state and is biologically active
•Reducing N-terminal disorder in fusion proteins increases expression and stability

The p53 protein protects our cells from cancer and is an interesting target for cancer treatments. The problem is, however, that it breaks down rapidly in the cell. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now found an unusual way of stabilising the protein and making it more potent. By adding a spider silk protein to p53, they show that it is possible to create a protein that is more stable and capable of killing cancer cells. The study is published in the journal Structure.

P53 plays a key r...

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