The ability of the HPV-18 E6 gene to impair p53-mediated transcriptional activity induced by DNA damaging agents was investigated. It is demonstrated that E6 can abolish DNA damage induced p53-mediated transcription and that a region from amino acid residue 113 to 117 of HPV-18 E6 protein was necessary for E6 to direct the degradation of p53. The biological importance of the E6/p53 interaction was then directly examined in HPV-16 containing cervical carcinoma derived cells by introducing the monomeric p53 mutant which is resistant to E6 mediated degradation. The two major observations made from this study were: (i) loss of p53 activity plays an important role in maintaining the malignant phenotype of these cells with respect to cell proliferation; (ii) the monomeric p53 mutant without its C-terminal regulatory region was biologically functional with respect to impairing cell proliferation in HPV-16 containing cervical carcinoma derived cells. Finally, it was revealed that the cellular MAP kinase signal transduction pathway was more active in cells expressing the HPV-16 E5 gene than in control cells or cells expressing E6 and E7. These observations help to define the mechanisms by which HPV oncogenes contribute to the development and maintenance of the neoplastic phenotype.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.40133 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Gu, Zhengming |
| Contributors | Matlashewski, Greg (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Institute of Parasitology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001505815, proquestno: NN12378, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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