P73, P63 and Mutant P53: Members of Protein Complexs Floating in Cancer Cells

Approximately half of human tumors bear p53 mutations (Hollestein et al., 1997). The most prevalent type consists of missense mutations that are frequently accompanied by loss of the remaining wild-type p53 (wt-p53) allele (Hainaut et al., 1997; Levine, 1997). The major site of the p53 mutations is the highly conserved DNA binding core domain (Hussain et al., 1998; Prives et al., 1999). Thus, mutant p53 (mt-p53) proteins are unable to …