“…THE TP53 GENE TP53 was first identified in 1979 as a gene encoding a protein that complexes to the large T antigen of SV40 (Lane and Crawford, 1979;Linzer and Levine, 1979). A number of properties initially assigned to the TP53 protein, including the ability to immortalize cells (Jenkins et al, 1984) and to transform primary rat embryo fibroblasts in cooperation with ras (Eliyahu et al, 1984;Parada et al, 1984), indicated that it was a dominantly acting oncogene. Mutation to TP53 was found to enhance its transformation efficiency, a finding compatible with the hypothesis that TP53 is a cellular oncogene that can be activated by mutation (Jenkins et al, 1985).…”