Wild type- and mutant p53 proteins in mitochondrial dysfunction: emerging insights in cancer disease

Deregulated cell metabolism is one of the cancer hallmarks. Mitochondrial DNA mutations and enzyme defects, aberrant tumor suppressor or oncogenic activities cause mitochondrial dysfunction leading to deregulated cellular energetics. The tumor suppressor protein, p53 is a tetrameric transcription factor that in response to diverse genotoxic and non-genotoxic insults activates a plethora of target genes to preserve genome integrity. In the last …