Vol.30 No.3 (2008 June): 301-306

Transcription Dependent and Independent Roles of p53 in Apoptosis Regulation

Ting-Zhe Sun#, Chun Chen#, Ping-Ping Shen*

(State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China)

Abstract p53 plays a key role in mediating various cell responses such as apoptosis to cellular stresses. Traditionally, the apoptogenic effects of p53 are ascribed to its transactivation activities in the nucleus. However, growing evidence has elucidated that cytoplasmic p53 can trigger apoptosis independent of its transactivation activity through sub-cellular translocation and activation of pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members. Coordination of the transcription dependent and independent functions of p53 contributes to cell ultimate response to stress, making a final decision between cell survival and death. In this paper we review the latest progress on the two different functions of p53 in apoptosis regulation and gave a unified model describing the cooperation between the nuclear and cytoplasmic pro-apoptotic function of p53.

Key words p53; apoptosis; transcription-dependent; transcription-independent; tumor

Received: December 17, 2007 Accepted: February 25, 2008
This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No.30571538), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No.BK2006120), and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No.NCET-06-0445)
#These authors contribute equally to the work
*Corresponding author. Tel: 86-25-83686635, E-mail: ppshen@nju.edu.cn