title: Recognition of Local DNA Structures by p53 Protein.
abstract: p53 plays critical roles in regulating cell cycle, apoptosis, senescence and metabolism and is commonly mutated in human cancer. These roles are achieved by interaction with other proteins, but particularly by interaction with DNA. As a transcription factor, p53 is well known to bind consensus target sequences in linear B-DNA. Recent findings indicate that p53 binds with higher affinity to target sequences that form cruciform DNA structure. Moreover, p53 binds very tightly to non-B DNA structures and local DNA structures are increasingly recognized to influence the activity of wild-type and mutant p53. Apart from cruciform structures, p53 binds to quadruplex DNA, triplex DNA, DNA loops, bulged DNA and hemicatenane DNA. In this review, we describe local DNA structures and summarize information about interactions of p53 with these structural DNA motifs. These recent data provide important insights into the complexity of the p53 pathway and the functional consequences of wild-type and mutant p53 activation in normal and tumor cells.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic v.v.i., Královopolská 135, 612 65 Brno, Czech Republic. vaclav@ibp.cz.
authors.forename: Václav
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Brázda
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic v.v.i., Královopolská 135, 612 65 Brno, Czech Republic. jac@ibp.cz.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Coufal
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001665:Binding Sites; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D059371:DNA, B-Form; D006801:Humans; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D011485:Protein Binding; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D059371:DNA, B-Form; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53; C051802:triplex DNA; D004247:DNA
keywords: local DNA structures; p53 protein; protein-DNA interactions