In 1993, the Neurofibromatosis type 2 gene product, merlin or schwannomin was identified by positional cloning and was mapped to chromosome 22q 12 (Rouleau et al., 1993; Trofatter et al., 1993). Individuals with mutations in this gene fail to produce normal merlin and develop the neural disorder, Neurofibromatosis type 2. The disease is characterized by growth of bilateral vestibular schwannomas with associated symptoms of tinnitus, hearing loss, balance dysfunction, meningiomas and other tumors of the nervous system (Ruggieri and Huson, 1999). To date, merlin's molecular mechanism of function as a tumor suppressor protein in cells is not known. In this thesis, we examined merlin's interaction with the epidermal growth factor receptor, erbB2, a receptor known to cause Schwann cell growth. Immunoprecipitation and indirect in vitro protein binding assay using total cell lysate from rat Schwann cells showed that merlin associates with erbB2. This association was further tested in a direct in vitro protein-protein binding assay, which showed that merlin binds directly to erbB2. This data places merlin in the erbB2 signaling pathway.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1204 |
| Date | 01 January 2000 |
| Creators | Dunn Stanley, Ingrid P. |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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