Carcinogenesis Advance Access published online on February 12, 2009
Carcinogenesis, doi:10.1093/carcin/bgp040
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Tpl-2 kinase downregulates the activity of p53 and enhances signaling pathways leading to activation of Activator Protein 1 induced by EGF
1 College of Pharmacy, Chosun University, Seosuk-dong, Dong-gu, Gwangju 501-759, South Korea
2 College of Pharmacy, Chonnam National University, Yongbong-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju 500-757, South Korea
3 Bio-Medical Research Institute, Kyungpook National University Hospital, Daegu 700-721, South Korea
* Address correspondence to: Hong Seok Choi, Tel: 82-62-230-6379; Fax: 507-437-9606; E-mail: chs{at}chosun.ac.kr
Tumor progression locus-2 (Tpl-2) kinase is a member of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) kinase kinase family that has been implicated in cellular transformation. The enhanced expression of this protein has been shown to activate both the MAPK and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) pathways. However, the molecular mechanisms responsible for the oncogenic potential of Tpl-2 are still largely unknown. Here, we showed that Tpl-2 interacted with p53 both in vitro and ex vivo. The overexpression of Tpl-2 inhibited the EGF-induced p53 phosphorylation (Ser15) through upregulating the activity of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A), which interacted with p53 stimulated by EGF. Also, the EGF-induced p53 activity was suppressed in the Tpl-2-wild-type-transfeted HEK 293 cells, but had no effect in the Tpl-2-mutant (S413A)-transfected cells. Furthermore, introduction of small interfering RNA-Tpl-2 into HEK 293 cells resulted in decreased cell viability compared to only adenovirus-p53-infected cells. In addition, the Tpl-2 wild type, but not Tpl-2 mutant (S413A), showed increased EGF-induced c-fos promoter activity, followed by AP-1 transactivation activity, which was associated with the cell transformation prompted by the H-Ras-Tpl-2-AP-1 signaling axis. These results indicated that the Ser413 of Tpl-2 plays an important role in EGF-induced carcinogenesis as well as inactivation of the p53.
Received September 1, 2008; revised December 24, 2008; accepted February 6, 2009.