抑癌基因关闭信号梯度

p53 shuts down the spatial signaling of a morphogen and prevents clonal cell expansion Dan Engelman1 and Cédric Blanpain1,2 The most frequently mutated tumor suppressor gene in human cancers is TP53 (1). Loss-of-function mutations lead to expansion of a mutated cell and its progeny in epithelial tissues, including sun-exposed regions of the skin, which can progress to invasive cancers. Upon stress, such as DNA damage, p53 becomes phosphorylated or acetylated, modifications that promote its stabilization and the activation of genes that cause cell cycle arrest, cellular senescence, or cell death (1). One might expect that clonal expansion triggered by the loss of p53 results from dysregulation of these canonical functions. On page 78 of this issue, Gan et al. …