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LIFE01200604005 Shri Somnath Ghosh - Homi Bhabha National ...

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CHAPTER 4<br />

DISCUSSION<br />

dose is delivered as fractionated irradiation. p53 classically considered to be a tumor suppressor<br />

protein, but in this study the results are contradictory. The fact that A549 cells express wild-type<br />

p53 protein, it was unable to suppress the proliferation of A549 cells that had been exposed to<br />

fractionated irradiation.<br />

Wild-type p53 function involves two steps. First, upstream signaling pathways stabilize and<br />

activate the p53 protein in response to DNA damage or other forms of cellular stress. In the<br />

second step, activated p53 binds to regulatory sequences of its target genes and activates their<br />

expression [244]. Either step may be defective in lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells. Defective<br />

activation of wild-type p53 after DNA damage could be the mechanism for suppression of p53<br />

function in A549 cells. The response of p53 to DNA damage involves an increase in p53 protein<br />

levels due to stabilization of the protein and an increase in p53 functional activity [245, 246]. It is<br />

quite likely that there is no defect in regulation of p53 stabilization in response to DNA damage<br />

because p53 was stabilized in response to fractionated irradiation in A549 cell line examined, and<br />

the steady-state levels of p53 were very high (Fig. 3.1.7A, B & C). The regulation of the<br />

functional activity of p53 seems to be defective. These findings are consistent with previous<br />

reports showing the function of wild-type p53 protein is apparently compromised in many cancer<br />

cells [247, 248]. Moreover, translocation of phospho-p53 into the nucleus could lead to cell cycle<br />

arrest, which will allow the cells to repair the DNA damage.<br />

Since DNA repair pathways were up-regulated in A549 cells that had been exposed to<br />

fractionated irradiation, it was of interest to look at the activation of genes and proteins involved<br />

in DNA repair pathways. Results of this study indicated that there is intense activation of repair<br />

genes and protein in A549 cells exposed to fractionated irradiation (Fig.3.1.4 and Fig.3.1.6).<br />

189

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