p53 gene as orchestra conductor
p53, commonly called the tumor suppressor gene, has attracted several fancy names, some worthy of Hollywood. “Guardian of the genome” (Lane, 1992), “Death star” (Vousden, 2000), “Good and bad cop” (Sharpless and DePinho, 2002), “An acrobat in tumorigenesis” (Moll and Schramm, 1998), are a few of the names that have been attributed to the p53 gene, according to the p53 website. Quite often p53 is called a master switch.
Now, scientists at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden have identified a great many more proteins that are under the control of p53 than were previously known. And they are proposing a new, musical metaphor.
(full story…)