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Cancer

Pinning a change on p53

Nature volume 419, pages 795–797 (2002)Cite this article

An enzyme-induced conformational change is now implicated in activating the p53 protein, one of a cell's prime movers in preventing tumour development.

One in three of us will succumb to cancer at some point in our lives. So it's not surprising that p53, a protein that helps to prevent the development of malignancies, is the subject of intense scrutiny. In recent years great progress has been made in understanding how p53 is regulated. Two reports in this issue, by Zheng et al.1 and Zacchi et al.2 (pages 849 and 853), now add a new level of complexity to our knowledge of this regulation by showing that, in order to become fully activated, p53 requires the involvement of an enzyme called Pin1. This discovery adds yet another player to an already crowded field. But it also sheds light on a series of previously described, but poorly understood, phosphorylation events — types of protein modification — that are known to affect p53.

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Figure 1: Regulation of p53 protein by Pin1, as suggested by the results of Zheng et al.1 and Zacchi et al.2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Cancer Research UK Beatson Laboratories, Garscube Estate, Switchback Road, Glasgow, G61 1BD, UK

    Kevin M. Ryan & Karen H. Vousden

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  1. Kevin M. Ryan
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  2. Karen H. Vousden
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Correspondence to Kevin M. Ryan or Karen H. Vousden.

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Ryan, K., Vousden, K. Pinning a change on p53. Nature 419, 795–797 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419795a

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