Publication Date:
1990-08-10
Description:
Somatic mutations in a subset of growth hormone (GH)-secreting pituitary tumors convert the gene for the alpha polypeptide chain (alpha s) of Gs into a putative oncogene, termed gsp. These mutations, which activate alpha s by inhibiting its guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) activity, are found in codons for either of two amino acids, each of which is completely conserved in all known G protein alpha chains. The likelihood that similar mutations would activate other G proteins prompted a survey of human tumors for mutations that replace either of these two amino acids in other G protein alpha chain genes. The first gene so far tested, which encodes the alpha chain of Gi2, showed mutations that replaced arginine-179 with either cysteine or histidine in 3 of 11 tumors of the adrenal cortex and 3 of 10 endocrine tumors of the ovary. The mutant alpha i2 gene is a putative oncogene, referred to as gip2. In addition, gsp mutations were found in 18 of 42 GH-secreting pituitary tumors and in an autonomously functioning thyroid adenoma. These findings suggest that human tumors may harbor oncogenic mutations in various G protein alpha chain genes.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lyons, J -- Landis, C A -- Harsh, G -- Vallar, L -- Grunewald, K -- Feichtinger, H -- Duh, Q Y -- Clark, O H -- Kawasaki, E -- Bourne, H R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1990 Aug 10;249(4969):655-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Human Genetics, Cetus Corporation, Emeryville CA 94608.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2116665" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Base Sequence
;
DNA, Neoplasm/genetics
;
Endocrine System Diseases/*genetics
;
Female
;
GTP Phosphohydrolases/genetics/metabolism
;
GTP-Binding Proteins/*genetics/metabolism
;
Humans
;
Male
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
*Mutation
;
Neoplasms/*genetics
;
Oligonucleotide Probes
;
*Oncogenes
;
Pituitary Neoplasms/*genetics
;
Polymerase Chain Reaction
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
