No abstract

Biologic machines need brakes, and the nature and fidelity of their operation cannot be unraveled without some prior understanding of how accelerators work. The discoveD] of mammalian G1 cyclins just 4 years ago and the identification of their associated cyclin-dependent kinases (cdks) provided key insights soon thereafter as to how progression through the first gap phase (G~) of the mammalian cell cycle might be regulated positively. Within the past 18 months, we have begun to learn something about the negative regulators--cdk inhibitors--that constrain their action.

No abstract

Cell-cell contact and TGF-13 can arrest the cell cycle in G1. MvlLu mink epithelial cells arrested by either mechanism are incapable of assembling active complexes containing the G1 cyclin, cyclin E, and its catalytic 8ubunit, Cdk2. These growth inhibitory signals block Cdk2 activation by raising the threshold level of cyclin E necessary to activate Cdk2. In arrested cells the threshold is set higher than physiological cyclin E levels and is determined by an inhibitor that binds to cyclin E-Cdk2 complexes. A 27-kD protein that binds to and prevents the activation of cyclin E-Cdk2 complexes can be purified from arrested cells but not from proliferating cells, using cyclin E-Cdk2 affinity chromatography, p27 is present in proliferating cells, but it is sequestered and unavailable to interact with cyclin E-Cdk2 complexes. Cyclin D2-Cdk4 complexes bind competitively to and down-regulate the activity of p27 and may thereby act in a pathway that reverses Cdk2 inhibition and enables G1 progression.

Targeted disruption of the murine p27(Kip1) gene caused a gene dose-dependent increase in animal size without other gross morphologic abnormalities. All tissues were enlarged and contained more cells, although endocrine abnormalities were not evident. Thymic hyperplasia was associated with increased T lymphocyte proliferation, and T cells showed enhanced IL-2 responsiveness in vitro. Thus, p27 deficiency may cause a cell-autonomous defect resulting in enhanced proliferation in response to mitogens. In the spleen, the absence of p27 selectively enhanced proliferation of hematopoietic progenitor cells. p27 deletion, like deletion of the Rb gene, uniquely caused neoplastic growth of the pituitary pars intermedia, suggesting that p27 and Rb function in the same regulatory pathway. The absence of p27 also caused an ovulatory defect and female sterility. Maturation of secondary ovarian follicles into corpora lutea, which express high levels of p27, was markedly impaired.