Kazutaka Murata | PubMed Health

PubMed2003

A p53-dependent checkpoint pathway prevents rereplication.

Eukaryotic cells control the initiation of DNA replication so that origins that have fired once in S phase do not fire a second time within the same cell cycle. Failure to exert this control leads to genetic instability. Here we investigate how rereplication is prevented in normal mammalian cells and how these mechanisms might be overcome during tumor progression. Overexpression of the replication initiation factors Cdt1 and Cdc6 along with cyclin A-cdk2 promotes rereplication in human cancer cells with inactive p53 but not in cells with functional p53. A subset of origins distributed throughout the genome refire within 2-4 hr of the first cycle of replication. Induction of rereplication activates p53 through the ATM/ATR/Chk2 DNA damage checkpoint pathways. p53 inhibits rereplication through the induction of the cdk2 inhibitor p21. Therefore, a p53-dependent checkpoint pathway is activated to suppress rereplication and promote genetic stability.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

v-Crk activates the phosphoinositide 3-kinase/AKT pathway by utilizing focal adhesion kinase and H-Ras.

v-Crk, an oncogene product of avian sarcoma virus CT10, efficiently transforms chicken embryo fibroblasts (CEF). We have recently reported that constitutive activation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT pathway plays a critical role in the v-Crk-induced transformation of CEF. In the present study we investigated the molecular mechanism by which v-Crk activates the PI3K/AKT pathway. First, we found that v-Crk promotes the association of the p85 regulatory subunit of PI3K with focal adhesion kinase (FAK) by inducing the phosphorylation of the Y397 residue in FAK. This FAK phosphorylation needs activation of the Src family tyrosine kinase(s) for which the v-Crk SH2 domain is responsible. v-Crk was unable to activate the PI3K/AKT pathway in FAK-null cells, indicating the functional importance of FAK. In addition, we found that H-Ras is also required for the activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway. The v-Crk-induced activation of AKT was greatly enhanced by the overexpression of H-Ras or its guanine nucleotide exchange factor mSOS, which binds to the v-Crk SH3 domain, whereas a dominant-negative mutant of H-Ras almost completely suppressed this activation. Furthermore, we showed that v-Crk stimulates the interaction of H-Ras with the Ras binding domain in the PI3K p110 catalytic subunit. Our data indicated that the v-Crk-induced activation of PI3K/AKT pathway was cooperatively achieved by two distinct interactions. One is the interaction of p85 with tyrosine-phosphorylated FAK promoted by the v-Crk SH2 domain, and another is the interaction of p110 with H-Ras dictated by the v-Crk SH3 domain.

Animals↗