Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Commons^™

Characterizing The Role Of The Retinoblastoma Protein Lxcxe Binding Cleft In Cellular Senescence And Tumor Suppression, Srikanth Talluri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Retinoblastoma protein (pRB) is a key regulator of the cell cycle and is functionally inactivated in most cancers. pRB has been proposed to utilize simultaneous interactions with E2F transcription factors and chromatin regulatory proteins to repress transcription and block cell cycle progression. The goal of this study is to characterize the physiological role of pRB interactions with chromatin regulatory proteins. I used gene targeted mice carrying point mutations in the murine Rb1 gene (Rb1^∆L) that specifically disrupt pRB’s LXCXE binding cleft, and thereby its ability to interact with chromatin regulatory proteins while leaving its ability to …

Systematic Analysis Of Residues In Conserved Region 3 Of The Human Papillomavirus 16 E7 Oncoprotein, Biljana Todorovic

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Although remarkable biological diversity is exhibited by viruses, as obligate intracellular parasites, they rely on host cell functions. As such, viruses typically must overcome a set of host barriers that prevent infection. For human papillomaviruses (HPV) one of these barriers is the state of terminal differentiation of the host cell. For that purpose HPVs encode two major oncoproteins, E6 and E7, which combine their efforts to effectively uncouple cellular differentiation from the cell cycle arrest. The E7 proteins have no intrinsic enzymatic activity or DNA binding ability, but they bind and manipulate numerous host proteins. E7 is a modular oncoprotein …

Investigating The Interplay Between Protein Kinases And Caspases, Jacob P. Turowec

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The balance between cell survival and death is a crucial process in human development and tissue homeostasis, but is also misregulated in disease. In large part, apoptosis is controlled by caspases, a hierarchical series of cysteine aspartic acid proteases that demolish the cell by cleaving key structural and enzymatic proteins, but emerging paradigms have highlighted the ability of kinases to regulate caspase activity. One way in which kinases can control the progression of apoptosis is through phosphorylation of caspase substrates, which acts to prevent caspase cleavage of that target.

In this thesis, we develop new strategies to study this regulatory …