IMR Press / FBL / Volume 16 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.2741/3717

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Micromanagement of the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway by p53
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1 Department of Pharmacology and Simmons Cancer Institute, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois 62794, USA
2 Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2011, 16(2), 749–758; https://doi.org/10.2741/3717
Published: 1 January 2011
Abstract

It is now well established that p53 is the primary arbiter of stress-response and the principal barrier to neoplastic processes at the cellular level. Perhaps the most potent weapon in p53's tumor suppressive arsenal is apoptosis, enacted as a last resort when all other remedies are exhausted. Initially, the mechanism was thought to be simply activation or repression of Bcl-2 family members by p53. More recently, evidence of a more rapid pathway emerged whereby p53 physically interacts with Bcl-2 family members to tip the balance toward apoptosis. This review details the multiple levels of regulation of mitochondrially-directed apoptosis by p53, including recent findings of how p53 translocation is regulated.

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