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J. Virol., May 1997, 3620-3627, Vol 71, No. 5
JG Teodoro and PE Branton
The adenovirus type 5 55-kDa E1B protein (E1B-55kDa) cooperates with E1A
gene products to induce cell transformation. E1A proteins stimulate DNA
synthesis and cell proliferation; however, they also cause rapid cell death
by p53-dependent and p53-independent apoptosis. It is believed that the
role of the E1B-55kDa protein in transformation is to protect against
p53-dependent apoptosis by binding to and inactivating p53. It has been
shown previously that the 55-kDa polypeptide abrogates p53-mediated
transactivation and that mutants defective in p53 binding are unable to
cooperate with E1A in transformation. We have previously mapped
phosphorylation sites near the carboxy terminus of the E1B-55kDa protein at
Ser-490 and Ser-491, which lie within casein kinase II consensus sequences.
Conversion of these sites to alanine residues greatly reduced transforming
activity, and although the mutant 55-kDa protein was found to interact with
p53 at normal levels, it was somewhat defective for suppression of p53
transactivation activity. We now report that a nearby residue, Thr-495,
also appears to be phosphorylated. We demonstrate directly that the
wild-type 55-kDa protein is able to block E1A-induced p53-dependent
apoptosis, whereas cells infected by mutant pm490/1/5A, which contains
alanine residues at all three phosphorylation sites, exhibited extensive
DNA fragmentation and classic apoptotic cell death. The E1B-55kDa product
has been shown to exhibit intrinsic transcriptional repression activity
when localized to promoters, such as by fusion with the GAL4 DNA-binding
domain, even in the absence of p53. Such repression activity was totally
absent with mutant pm490/1/5A. These data suggested that inhibition of p53-
dependent apoptosis may depend on the transcriptional repression function
of the 55-kDa protein, which appears to be regulated be phosphorylation at
the carboxy terminus.
Copyright © 1997, American Society for Microbiology
Regulation of p53-dependent apoptosis, transcriptional repression, and cell transformation by phosphorylation of the 55-kilodalton E1B protein of human adenovirus type 5
Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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